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QHILDREN
OF THE NATIONS

POULTNEY BIGELOW

LTNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

THE CHILDREN
OF THE NATIONS

A STUDY OF COLONIZATION
AND ITS PROBLEMS

POULTNEY BIGELOW, M.A., F.R.G.s.

Author of " History of the German Struggle
for Liberty," "White Man's Africa," Etc.

M^.Clurk, Pimlmps £5 C9

NEW YORK
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iy. ^ I ^HE Tiiost philosophic of Travellers^

A the most travelled of Philosophers

— who loves his country yet speaks ill of

no other — these pages are dedicated in

sign of affectionate regard by the author

KiOSiJI

PREFACE

THIS brief work is an attempt to explain the
influence which the mother country exerts
upon colonies, and which colonies in turn
exert upon the mother country — for good or evil. It
is largely the result of personal observation in parts
of the world controlled by the great colonizing pow-
ers. We Americans have now a Colonial Empire to
administer, and we cannot afiford to be indifferent to a
matter which has in times past profoundly modified
the constitution of nearly every great civilized nation.
An effort has here been made to point out why one
country has failed and another succeeded. It is our
hope that earnest people may ultimately induce Con-
gress to establish a National University for the study
of subjects in which a colonial of^cial should be pro-
ficient. We need a species of Colonial West Point ; wc
owe it to our fellow-men — whether they be Spanish
or Tagalog; Chinese or Malay; Papist or Pagan; East
or West Indian — that we give them a government
based on business principles. We can expect no as-
sistance in Washington until one of the great political
parties is made to feci the effect of an awakened public
conscience.

I cannot adc(|nrit('Iy express my obligation to the
many wlio have helped me in my task — friends scat-
tered in all corners of the world, missionaries, mer-

I vii I

PREFACE

chants, soldiers, sailors, consuls, and natives. Many
of these cannot be quoted because of their official
relations.

As to works on this subject, there are many excel-
lent ones suggested by such names as Zimmermann,
Lucas, Morris, Woodrow Wilson, Theall. But the
subject is one that enfolds the earth, and requires for
its discussion a basis of facts which are but feebly
supplied by the official reports of administrators. If
many of my conclusions vary from those current it
will be found that I have drawn less from official re-
ports than from personal inquiry and observation.

POULTNEY BiGELOW.

Century Club,
New York, March 27, 1901.

[ ^^" 1

CONTENTS

Page

I. How Spain Commenced to Colonize ... i

Columbus and the Slave-trade — Greed for Gold at the Spanish Court —
Las Casas Tries to Protect Natives.

II. The First Check to Spanish Colonization 19

The Reformation — A Conflict between Germanic and Latin Ideas — Con-
quest of Peru — Spain's Constant Need of Gold.

III. The Development of South America . . 34

Extermination of Natives — Influence of the Jesuits in Paraguay.

IV. The Relations of Spain with Cuba and
Manila Down to the End of the Nine-
teenth Century 45

The Effect of Freebooting on the Development of Colonial Trade in the
Sixteenth Century — English Occupation of Havana and Manila —
Treatment of Chinese.

V. The Totter and Tumble of Spain's Co-

lonial Empire 61

Influence of the Monroe Doctrine on South America — The Fight be-
tween Spain and Her Colonies.

VI. Latter-Day Cuba 73

Indifference to Emancipation at the Beginning of the Century — Prosperity
under Slavery — Influence of the United Sl.ites.

VII. The Philippines in Our Time . . . . S4

Spaniuh and English Systems Compared — Influcnco of the Roni.m Cliun li
— The Yankee in M.inil.i.

I '^ 1

CONTENTS

Page

VIII. The Negro as an Element in Colonial
Expansion 93

The Negro in America — South Africa — West Indies — As a Soldier —
Equality with Whites.

IX. Official German Colonization . . . .111

The German in Kiao Chow — German East Africa — West Indies and
United States.

X. Colonial Portugal in Our Time . . . .126

Some Personal Notes on Delagoa Bay — Macao — The Moluccas — The
Portuguese Slave-trade and Missionary Enterprise.

XI. The First Years of Portuguese Greatness 135

Early Explorers — Henry the Navigator — Albuquerque — Relations with
Africa and the Far East.

XII. The Colonial Break-up of Portugal . . 142

St. Francis Xavier — Jesuits in China — Official Corruption — Military De-
cadence.

XIII. Portugal in America 147

Founding of Brazil — Jesuit Missions — Criminals.

XIV. The Evolution of the Boer . . . .153

Conflict between Dutch East India Company and the Boers — Attitude of
England toward the Boers — Future of South Africa.

XV. The Dutch Colonist of To-day . . .168

Traces of Holland in New York — Transvaal — British Guiana — Contrast
of Boer and Dutchman.

XVI. The Boer at Home 176

Domestic Life of the Boer To-day — Comparison between South Africa and
North America.

[ X ]

CONTENTS

Page

XVII. The Scandinavian Colonist 183

Denmark in the West Indies — A Canoe Cruise Round St. Thomas — Ne-
groes in Santa Cruz.

XVIII. Some Notes from the Danish West
Indies made in Santa Cruz 190

Influence of English Language — A Successful Planter — How to Treat the
Blacks.

XIX. The Chinaman as Colonist 205

His Increase in the United States and Australia — Singapore — Hong Kong
— Industrial Value.

XX. Old France in the New World . . .216

Influences which Retarded Colonization in Canada — History of the Move-
ment — Church and State.

XXI. The Spirit of France in the West In-
dies 224

Liberty and Progress Due to the Freebooters — Martinique and Guadeloupe
— Effect of Slavery.

XXII. The West Indies Two Hundred Years
Ago ... 235

Voyage of PJre Labat — Extraordinary Luxury — Treatment of Natives.

XXIII. Colonial France To-day 246

De»irc for Colonics, Why Unsuccessful — Excellence as Missionaries, Italian
Emigrants.

XXIV. The Spread of Russia 252

I'iie Coluniz.itiiji) of Sibcri.i — Conlliil liclwccii t'iiin.i and Rustii.i.

CONTENTS

Page

XXV. The Beginnings of English Coloniza-

/ TioN IN America 263

Settlement of Virginia, New England, Barbados — Capacity of English for
Self-government.

XXVI. When Americans Were English . . .272

Settlements in Virginia, Maryland, New England — Love of Local Liberty
— English Tradition.

XXVII. Why England Lost Her American
Colonies 279

Tyranny of English Colonial Administration before America Rebelled —
Contrast with Present-Day Relations.

XXVIII. A Successful Tropical Republic in
THE West Indies 285

Barbados — A Tropical Republic — Declares Charles II. King — Opposes
Cromwell — Economic Development.

XXIX. From My Diary in British Guiana . 297

January 25, 1890. In the Court Room at Georgetown, Demerara.

XXX. The West Indies To-day and To-mor-
Row 303

Negro, Chinese, East Indians and Whites — Duty of the Anglo-Saxon
toward West Indies — Good Government Needed.

XXXI. Australasia 314

Indifference of the Mother Country to this Colony — Startling Advances in
Material Wealth and Political Experiment.

XXXII. Can the White Man and His Wife
Flourish in the Tropics 330

Railways and Sanitation Essentials to the White Man's Happiness in the
Tropics — Heat Itself not Dangerous.

r xii 1

CONTENTS

Page

XXXIII. The White Invasion of China . . 341

Treaty Ports — Self-government of White Merchants — The Open Door
Policy.

XXXIV. The Philosophy of Colonization . . 353

Trade Does not Necessarily Follow the Flag — Home Government Should
Encourage Emigration.

XXXV. The American as a Colonist . . . 359

Spread of New Englanders over all North America — Capacity for Local
Self-government.

f '«''' 1

HOW SPAIN COMMENCED TO COLONIZE

*' Blind folly, ignoble selfishness, crushing tyranny, and hideous
cruelty, mark every page of the history of the domination of Spain. ' '
— Lecky, "Rationalism in Europe," II., 335.

Columbus and the Slave-trade — Greed for Gold at the Spanish
Court — Las Casas Tries to Protect Natives

AT the centre of Spain, in the high, bleak, stony
plateau characteristic of the neighborhood
north of Madrid, rising like a vast and monot-
onous mausoleum out of a dead waste of granite boul-
ders, stands the far-famed Escurial. It embodies the
spirit that gave it birth, the mind of a man half mon-
arch, half monk; a king whose audience chamber was
the cell of a recluse, whose walks abroad were limited
by the walls of a cloister, to whom sunshine and the
song of birds were profane, whose waking and sleeping
were alike determined by monastic rules. Philip II.*
built this mighty architectural monstrosity. The old
world and the new were ransacked for its adornment.
Within its walls is embedded a cathedral that would
be considered of commanding proportions in most
cities of the world; but in this great granite wilder-
ness it seems but the chajjcl in a nobleman's palace.

• I'liilip II. was liorii 1 527 ami died ic;c)8. He became king in 1556
aiifl tlicreltjre afllitlcd liis touiilry for (ortytwo years, lie outlived four

wives.

I • I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Windows are counted by the hundreds, resounding
corridors are measured by miles. In the cellars alone
appears to be space enough for many royal residences.
The visitor to-day sees little change after three cen-
turies — priests are now in possession as they were
from the very beginning; and, after marvelling at the
amount of money and labor represented by this dreary
pile, one leaves it with a sigh, for it symbolizes the pride
of a priest-ridden and unproductive empire.

Amidst the great treasures of the Escurial, none is
more precious than the little room in one corner of
the vast building, where Philip II. received ambassa-
dors from all the monarchs of the world, and whence
he despatched viceroys, missionaries, commanders of
armies, to Mexico, Manila, Cuba, or Peru. This
strange little room — no larger than a bed-chamber in
a modern hotel — was kept artificially darkened, that
the monarch might be the less distracted by the sight
of real things. While the blistering summer sun was
full in the heavens, lighting up the Guadarrama Moun-
tains, and while flocks of sheep and goats were tinkhng
their little bells and proclaiming at least some inno-
cent life in this ".stony-lonesome," the monarch of
half the world lit his little lamp in a black alcove and
read his despatches, or indicted instructions for the
more rapid conversion of the heathen. Here he ruled
over the lives and fortunes of half the human race;
here were decided the deHcate questions affecting
the prosperity of colonies, questions of commerce,
relations of master and servant, land legislation,
navigation acts, taxation in every form, relative
power of civil and military officials — questions which

[ 2 ]

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

vexed the ablest cabinets even when assisted by
the greatest experts in all branches of political
economy.

Philip II. shut out the light from his cell in the
Escurial and consulted with minds darkened like his
own. He sought guidance among his fellow-monks,
and his political creed took no wider range than that
of his father-confessor. Whether called upon to make
war with England or increase the poll tax in Porto
Rico, to encourage emigration or limit the exports
from the Philippines, the voice that determined was
the voice of a monk.

Spain's career as a colonial empire lasted, roughly,
through four centuries. Columbus sailed from Spain
in 1492 and made his first settlement in the West In-
dies about Christmas-time of that year. In 1493 he
returned and presented Ferdinand and Isabella with a
New World, which within the next generation was
converted into an annex of Spain, reaching from the
southern edges of the present United States to the
northern portions of what are now the Argentine Re-
public and Chili. From the first discovery of Cuba and
Porto Rico to that day in which the Spanish flag was
finally driven out of American waters, the history of
Spain constitutes one of the most romantic of colonial
chronicles, full of interest to the general student, and
of vital concern to those who have undertaken the task
in which another has failed.

It is worth noting that SjKiin's beginning as a colo-
nial power was coincident with the expulsion from her
soil of the only po()j)lc who, at that time, were com-
petent to deal with cfoiioniic problems from a purely

[ 3 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

profit-making point of view. The Jews were then
(1492), as they have been for generations, the money-
lenders, the brokers, the commercial agents of the
world — they were pre-eminently fitted to be the mid-
dlemen in transactions where absence of political and
religious passion was useful. Spain, at that time, had
a population of only four and one-half millions, dis-
tributed over a territory nearly equal to that of France
— roughly 200,000 square miles.

At first sight it would not seem that pressure of
population had anything to do with causing her to
seek an expansion of territory, unless we regard as
over-populated every country that is badly governed.

When Columbus sailed on his first voyage, Ferdi-
nand * and Isabella ruled a country that had emerged
victorious from a long war of the white man against
the Moor — the Church of Rome against the infidel.
Religious fervor and the flush of victories in war,
united with love of plunder in producing a public sen-
timent ready for adventure in any field which offered
scope for the missionary, the soldier, the government
of^cial. These three were united by thirst for conquest
— conquest for the Church, conquest for glory, con-
quest for the sake of plunder; so long as the conquest
was successful, the father confessor was apt to be ac-
commodating.

Few countries have achieved so much for glory as
Spain, and still fewer have had so little substance to
show for it. At the end of the fifteenth century agri-

* Ferdinand, the " Catholic," was born in 1452 and died in 1 516. He
married Isabella in 1469. She died in 1504. This king established the
Inquisition at Seville in 1480.

[ 4 ]

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

culture was at a very low ebb; Valencia barely raised
one-third of what she required, while Catalonia and
Aragon depended almost entirely on import for a
supply. It is the irony of fate that while Spain gloried
in having driven away the Jews and the Moors, the
traveller, even of the present day, notes with surprise
that it is to the magnificent labors of infidels that
Christian Spain owes most of the irrigating works
that sustain her present population. Carthaginians,
Jews, and Moors built up the Spain of 1492. The
generation of conquerors, colonizers, and explorers
was the legitimate result of wars waged with fanatic
recklessness, and Spain reached the zenith of her glory
at the outset of a colonial career for which she was
but feebly equipped. Her conquest of the Western
World was achieved within the lifetime of a single man,
but no sooner had her power been effectively asserted
than she commenced to govern in a manner which
makes us marvel, not so much at the quantity of colo-
nies she has lost, but at the fact that there remained,
in 1898, any for her to lose.

As everyone knows, the Pope, Alexander VI.,* di-
vided the world into two parts; the one he presented
to Portugal, the other to Spain. This was a species of
generosity excellent as between the two countries im-
mediately concerned, but, as events proved, calculated
to make trouble when English, French, and Dutch
slKjuld develop a taste for far-away venture.

So, while Portuguese sailors sought the ICast Indies,

* This I'ope, Horjjia by name, ruled the so-called Christian world from
1402 to 1505. -lie ovv(;(l liis <)(Iic<; to bribery, l)urne(l Savoiiiiroia, iiitro-
(luL<-(l lh<- cciisorslii|i o( l)(Mil<s, \v;is liiially riiiiovcil by poisoii, Iciivin^ be
Iliad several illc^;iliniut<;cliil<bcii. 'I'liis man j^ave the vvurld away in 14<J{!

I 5 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Columbus reached the West Indies, which at that time
he beheved to be a portion of China or Japan.

King Ferdinand took httle interest in Columbus.
It was Isabella who really discovered America, and
considering, therefore, our obligations to that lady, we,
as Americans, need offer no apology to those who ac-
cuse us of worshipping woman.

The pictures of Columbus which I have so far been
able to see, represent him as pecuHarly amiable, if not
benevolent in appearance. His second expedition,
however, in 1493, was fitted out by appropriating the
confiscated estates of banished Jews. But this was
offset by the Church's advancing him a portion of its
tithes, and sending to the New World an Apostolic
Vicar and eleven Benedictine friars.

Already, on his third expedition, Columbus sug-
gested that the natives of the West Indies, the gentle
Caribs, should be sold as slaves, in order to raise money
for the Government, and in 1494 five hundred were
brought to Spain and sold. Slave auctions of Caribbee
Indians became an institution in Seville, but the money
raised did not by any means make up for the chests
of gold and precious stones that Columbus had led
his friends at home to expect.

Cuba, Hayti, Porto Rico, Jamaica — these were sore
disappointments to the first arrivals, who found huts
of reeds where they had anticipated treasure houses
of nabobs. It was a blow to those pioneers when
they realized that colonization involved the tilling of
the soil under a sun not hotter, but much more per-
sistent, than that even of Madrid or Alicante.

The instructions to Columbus had been very ex-
[ 6 ]

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

plicit as to the importance of converting the natives
to Christianity, and while the Church Iiad some scru-
ples regarding slavery when applied to those of its own
faith, the Pope looked upon it as a fair punishment for
those who remained heretic. Of course it would have
been most inconvenient had all the natives turned
Christian, for then there would have been an end to
slavery. So the natives were hunted down by blood-
hounds; they were addressed in Spanish, and they
answered in Caribbee. The white slave-raider swore
that the Carib had refused to become a Christian,
while the poor Carib knew nothing of what was ex-
pected of him. In any event, the white man's word
was taken, the Carib was branded, sold as a slave, and
thus was laid the foundation of Spain's colonial fort-
une. From the very outset Columbus inaugurated
the policy that every Indian owed more or less of his
labor to the white man, without remuneration, and
that policy was not reversed until Admiral Dewey
trained his twelve-inch guns upon Manila in the sum-
mer of 1898.

And yet the early regulations sounded moderate
enough — they were at least sanctioned by the Chris-
tian Church of the day. Every native over fourteen
years old was required to deliver quarterly either so
much gold or so much cotton, according to the neigh-
borhood, and in return he received a copper medal by
way of receipt. Of course, if he could not show this
evidence f)f labor pcrfonnod. he was punished in
any way tliat his vvliilo master thouglil iiiosl prolU-
able.

In 1497 Columbus found so nuicb dilliculty in at-
[ 7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

tracting free men to the New World that a law was
passed, at his request, by which he was able to recruit
his colony from the prisons. So in that year Colum-
bus had to sail back to the New World with two hun-
dred criminals as his only recruits.

The history of Columbus is familiar to us all, and
we need here only note that after eight years of labor
as a discoverer, explorer, colonist, and conqueror, he
was, in 1500, taken back to Spain as a prisoner. He
was stripped of his honors, his petitions were unan-
swered. He died of a broken heart in Valladolid in
1506, surviving Queen Isabella by two years.

The house in which he died, No. 7 Calle de Colon,
is so well preserved that it seems to be modern, and of
course it is a shrine to which the American traveller
to-day makes reverent pilgrimage.

The men who made Spain great in those days ex-
cited envy amongst their contemporaries; but few
form an exception to the general rule that success
is more difficult to bear than misfortune. Commenc-
ing with Columbus, who was sent home from the New
World in chains, there are very few whose closing
years can excite in us other feelings than pity. Bal-
boa, who discovered the Pacific, lost his head at the
age of forty-two. Cortes was disgraced and impris-
oned, and the conquest of Mexico did not save him
from dying a disappointed man. De Soto, who dis-
covered the Mississippi, was carried away by swamp
fever in 1541, and in the same year Pizarro was killed
by his own people. It is difficult to name one of the
great Spanish conquerors whose life was not embit-
tered to him by the suspicion and jealousy of those

[ 8 ]

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

whom he was serving in Madrid, or by the treachery
of his fellow-adventurers. The worst that befell the
British conquerors in India was mild, indeed, com-
pared with the average treatment meted out to the
noblest sons of Spain in the days when her court was
most completely influenced by the Christian Church.
Clive and Warren Hastings in their darkest hours
would have hesitated to change places with Cortes or
Columbus.

SLAVERY

Ferdinand was a pious and humane man so long
as his piety did not conflict with his pocket. By a
quaint course of reasoning he was made to see that
while it was wicked to enslave Indians who recognized
him as their king, it was quite correct to make slaves
of Africans to whom he had granted no royal privi-
lege. In 1 50 1 negro slavery first made its appearance
in America, and from that time on it has divided the
sentiment of priest and layman alike in every part of
the world where one man has been privileged to ex-
ploit the labor of another.

The Church thundered against slavery in the ab-
stract, but amongst Blacks or Caribs they found
plausible pretexts for an institution which has since
been defended by the united Protestant clergy of many
English and American states, to say nothing of Puri-
tan pastors in the land of Paul Kruger. y\s early as
1495 we read in the Papal Bull this message to mis-
sionaries:

" You shall persuade the people who inliabit these isl-
ands and ccjiitiiicnts to aeeept the (hrisliaii faith.

I W I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

" We impress upon you . . . according to your
promise ... to select honourable men, and send
them to these continents and islands — men who fear God
— who are instructed, clever, and suitable for the purpose
of teaching the Catholic doctrine to the inhabitants, and
to bring them up in good habits."

In her last will, Isabella enjoined humane treatment
for the Indians, while, at the same time, urging their
conversion to Christianity.

But those who most generously pleaded for kind
treatment were inclined to extenuate slavery, on the
ground that it is better for a heathen to be the slave
of a Christian than to run loose without hope of sal-
vation. In 1509, three years after the death of his
father, the eldest son of Columbus was sent to America
and inaugurated such a slave-hunting as scandalized
even the colonial monks of the day. Under him Ind-
ian and African slavery flourished. In order -to get
a pretext for raiding the Indians, he would issue a
proclamation calling upon a whole tribe to become
Christian, and then, without waiting to incjuire whether
that particular tribe understood its language or pur-
port, he would send a detachment of soldiers to make
war upon them and bring back the prisoners in chains.

We must be careful, in studying the history of four
centuries ago, to make due allowance for difference in
custom, and to judge men by standards of their own
time and state of society. Let us inquire, therefore,
to what extent the treatment of the natives in the West
Indies was sustained by the sentiment either of the
Spanish people or the Church which controlled the
Court.

[ 10 I

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

In 1 510 some fourteen Dominican monks came to
San Domingo and at once commenced to preach in
public against the cruelties practised toward the na-
tives. It is to their credit that they were the first
religious order that openly protested against slavery
in the New World. The new Governor, Columbus,
cared as little for the letter of his instructions as did
King Ferdinand. That Christian monarch had urged
the Governor to send him money: '' Get money — by
merciful means if possible — but get it! "

Columbus knew that anything would be forgiven
provided gold was procured; but that nothing could
atone for an empty chest.

So slave-raiding went on — even to the neighboring
Bahamas. There the unsuspicious natives were coaxed
aboard ship by promises of presents, and, when once
aboard, were seized, manacled, and carried away to
slavery.

Before the Spaniards had been eighteen years in the
West Indies, colonial public sentiment had become
" educated " on the subject of slavery as completely
as it ever became in after years either in South Caro-
lina or South Africa. Every colonist understood that
under slavery his plantation would pay, and that with-
out it he would be a loser. Every priest realized that
under slavery his parishioners could afford handsome
tithes, but that under free labor they would all be poor
together. The Crown officials saw in slavery a means
(A getting rich tribute to the mother country, and also
an easy way of keeping in order a population that
might otherwise be making mischief.

Is it strange, therefore, that in the midst of such a
[ II I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

community, the governor, the priest, the soldier, and
the colonist miited in drawing the conclusion that God
intended the Indian to be the white man's slave?

Now there is nothing new in this growth of public
sentiment in favor of slavery. Wherever a large por-
tion of the community have found it to their interest
to keep slaves, there have never been wanting min-
isters of the Gospel ready to prove from the pulpit
that slavery was a divine institution.

It took courage of no common order for a priest
to preach, in 1510, " abolition " sermons in the midst
of a slave colony like San Domingo.

As might have been anticipated, the colonists were
highly indignant; they posted a Franciscan monk off
to Spain to make representations against the meddle-
some Dominican. But the Dominican was also good
at diplomacy, and sailed for Spain in the same ship.

At first Ferdinand would not see the " abolition "
monk. He wanted money, and was much vexed that
this Dominican interfered between him and his profits.
But the Dominican procured strong clerical backing,
and finally was admitted to an audience. He unfolded
such a tale of cruelty that even Ferdinand for a mo-
ment forgot his share in the iniquitous traffic and lis-
tened sympathetically to the friar's tale — how, for in-
stance, a Spaniard had tossed a two-year-old Indian
baby into the water out of wantonness, and watched it
drown as though it had been a useless kitten, and no
punishment inflicted upon the white master!

Ferdinand did what all weak rulers do — he shifted
the responsibility from his own shoulders to those of
others; in other w^ords, he appointed a committee to

[ 12 ]

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

inquire — a species of whitewashing commission, which
has since become fashionable in high poHtical circles.

This commission was made up of priests and cour-
tiers who brought in the sort of reform that Ferdinand
desired. They denounced slavery in the abstract —
advocated humane measures in the abstract — did
everything that was Christian in the abstract — but in
the concrete, left everything as it was. The Indians
must be converted, and those who refused should be
made slaves!

And our knowledge of human nature assures us that
this loophole was sufficient for the slave-owning plant-
ers of the West Indies.

In 1 5 12 this new law was passed. It altered noth-
ing, but it enabled Ferdinand to confess with more
ease, because the theological junta had assured him
that now his conscience was clear on the subject of
slavery.

The good Dominican friar enjoyed an academic sort
of triumph — what the artistic world calls a succcs
(Testimc — a triumph in name, but not in fact. It was
even reported that his impassioned eloquence had con-
verted the hostile Franciscan into becoming an aboli-
tionist. At any rate, whatever might have been the
efifect of the Dominican's efforts on the minds of the
people in Spain, they had scant effect in the colo-
nies.

The statistics of the day represented Ilispaniola
(San Domingo) as containing a largo population in
1492. In 1508 the number had sunk from ihe neigh-
borhood of a million to 70,000; in 1510, to 40,000;
in 1514, to 13.000 — practical extermination 1

\ 13 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Another friend of the Indians rose up in the person
of the great Dominican, Las Casas, the son of one
who had sailed with Columbus to the New World. In
1502 he came to Hispaniola as a priest, and soon be-
came a slave-driving planter like the rest. But his
conscience pricked him one day and he Hberated his
slaves and devoted himself from that time on to philan-
thropy. He worked during his whole life and died at
the age of ninety-two respected by all who knew of
him and his work; but, so far as the natives them-
selves were concerned, his influence w'as very
httle.

After much difficulty he secured an audience of Fer-
dinand in 1 5 15 — thanks to the intercession of the
father-confessor; but, though he pleaded eloquently,
Ferdinand did as little in this case as in that of the
other Dominican. Las Casas was referred to the head
of the Colonial Department, a Bishop of the Church,
and to him he related how 7,000 Indian children had
died in three months! The Bishop's answer was,
merely:

" What business is that of mine — or the King? "

Then Las Casas burst forth:

" Is it then no business of your Grace or the
King that all these souls are lost? Great and ever-
lasting God! Whose business is it then?" Ferdi-
nand died in the following year and, no doubt, met
in Heaven some of the souls for w^hom he had had
little time to trouble himself here below. Ferdinand
was like many another weak mortal; he would have
been honest had he been rich enough to afford such
luxury.

[ 14]

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

In 1 516, the great Charles V.,* at the age of six-
teen, became King of Spain, and soon thereafter (1520)
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. During his
minority the Government was in the hands of Cardinal
Ximenes, a name associated with much refined cruelty
perpetrated under the cloak of the Inquisition. His
palace is to-day the home of the British Ambassador
in Madrid. A subterranean passage leads beneath the
street from this house to what was the torture cham-
ber. The house of the Cardinal remains to-day al-
most as it was at the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury. The rooms are mostly little cells for monks, with
doors in which a little hole is cut, that those outside
may occasionally peer through to see what the brother
friar is doing.

Ximenes had large views for a man of his time and
supported Las Casas. This was not so much because
this Grand Inquisitor could not stand human suffering,
but as a statesman he looked with alarm upon the
gradual depopulation of his master's colonies. He
legislated regarding Caribbee Indians as a forester
would regarding those who destroyed wantonly a valu-
able grove of trees.

But Charles V. needed money quite as much as did
Ferdinand — perhaps more. Even as mere King of
Spain Charles had none too much, but his vanity and
colonial possessions had impelled him to seek an im-
perial throne in Europe as well as in America; and the
expenditure connected with this new dignity — heavy

* Charles V. was born in 1500 in Flanders, and died in iji^S ; tliouph
lw(j years before, he abdicated and retired to the monastery of Juste.
This is the man who presided at the trial of Martin Luther at Worms, in
1521.

[ IS]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

enough to a rich country — was almost crushing to one
as poor as Spain. It was from the New World that
Charles sought the money to sustain his new honors;
and with pressing creditors at his gates, he could not
afford to examine too minutely the means by which
he was enabled to make his reign brilliant. His father-
confessor soothed him by saying that the important
thing was the object on which the gold was spent,
rather than the means employed in securing it. And,
therefore, we note throughout these years constant
efforts by noble men like Las Casas, and an equally
constant abstract interest in humanity expressed by
the Crown; humane laws passed, but never enforced.
The natives are always to be treated gently, but always
to do what the white man wishes!

Las Casas was named Protector of the IndianL. He
might as well have been named protector of the polar
bears !

A Franciscan monk who accompanied Pedraria's
expedition to Darien, in 15 14, wrote that the whole
country was pillaged and laid waste; that no cruelty
or treachery was omitted in order to procure gold or
slaves; that in one raid alone, 40,000 Indians were de-
stroyed. Pedraria also bore instructions to be gentle
with the native!

The manner in which Cuba was originally con-
quered and colonized is a fitting pendant to her con-
dition under Weyler in 1898. In 151 1 the Chartered
Company of Seville — a trade monopoly for the Ameri-
can colonies — decided to conquer Cuba, using His-
paniola (San Domingo) as a base. So it sent off to that
island three hundred volunteers, who had no other ob-

[ 16 ]

HOW SPAIN COLONIZED

ject than plunder. They landed and commenced to
call upon the natives to recognize the Christian religion
and submit. The Cuban natives were, however, less
inclined to submit than those of San Domingo — no
doubt, news of Spanish rule in San Domingo had pre-
ceded this missionary enterprise. But the natives were
finally beaten, and their chief taken prisoner. He was
brought before the Spanish conqueror and ordered to
turn Christian before he should be put to death. The
chief wanted to know what good it would do him to
turn Christian at such a late hour in the day.

He was told that by turning Christian he would
secure access to Heaven.

" Should I meet any Spaniards in Heaven? " asked
the Cuban.

" Certainly," answered the priest.

" Then I'd rather go somewhere else! " said the sim-
ple savage.

Cuba was not colonized until nineteen years after
the date of Columbus's first voyage, but from the out-
set it became a place of prime commercial, strategic,
and agricultural importance, in spite of the fact that
it did not attract so much attention as those colonies
in which precious metals were abundant.

Already, in 1518, there were eight white settlements
on the island, and in the following year the colony
felt strong enough to fit out an expedition (of Cortes)
to the mainland. 'J'hc first Cuban (lovernor, Velas-
quez, inaugurated his rule on the plan which subse-
(|uently prevailed with baneful monottjiiy throughout
Spanish America. Tin- land was divided up among
the white settlers, willioul asking permission of the

I •; I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Indians. The Crown, of course, reserved all rights not
distinctly parted with. Then the natives were made
to work for the whites. If they declined, they were
hunted down and enslaved, on the plea that they were
obstinate heathen. But the Cuban Indians made
much trouble, and the colony finally concluded that
in the long run it was cheaper to get negroes from
Africa, than to have the expense of constantly fighting
among the natives. So, from 1522 on, extermina-
tion commenced. It was a job soon done. The black
man took the place of the copper-colored one — that
was all!

[ 18]

THE FIRST CHECK TO SPANISH COLONI-
ZATION

*' We believe to be the most frightful of all spectacles — the
strength of civilization without its mercy.''''

— Macaulay, "Clive."

The Reformation — A Conflict between Germanic and Latin Ideas
— Conquest of Peru — Spain's Constant Need of Gold

IN 1 5 19 an obscure monk in a North German clois-
ter brooded and brooded with Teutonic thorough-
ness, until at length the courage came to him from
on high and he challenged the Roman Catholic Church
in the name of religious liberty. His voice found an
echo throughout Northern Europe, at the courts of rul-
ing princes, among the scholars of Leyden and Hei-
delberg, and above all among the rude but reflective
peasantry — to whose hearts the rugged speech of Mar-
tin Luther found immediate access. Papal excommu-
nication and threats of violence only strengthened the
force of this great awakening. Every courier brought
to Rome news of fresh disaster to the army of infallibil-
ity, new concjucsts for Protestantism; until, from the
North Cape downward, the avalanche of heretical ele-
ments promised to overflow the Alps and the Pyrenees.
The danger was great, and Rome realized it. At such
a crisis the weak and the lazy were thrust aside and new
men with more youthful energy and broader knowl-

I i<) I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

edge of the world were permitted to come forward as
the champions of papal authority against those whom
they regarded as impious rebels. In Italy and Spain
the act of the Wittenberg monk was received as an in-
sult to the Latin race. There were plenty in the papal
ranks who desired reform, who believed that the
Church should take the lead in spreading scholarship
and scientific truth, no less than theology and morality.
The birth of Protestantism brought with it a new force
in Roman Catholic development, a force that was
based upon knowledge of the world, mastery of the sci-
ences, social polish, fluency in speech, diplomatic tact
— ^in short, every art that assists one man in dominat-
ing the mind of another. This force alone meant refor-
mation to no small extent, but when to all this was
linked the daring and fanatic zeal of a Loyola,* then
was created the one force capable of setting bounds
to Luther's work. The great Reformation had a
political and intellectual side no less important than its
theological one.

The citizen of London resented the domination of
an Italian priest, though he willingly accepted an equal
amount of tyranny from one of his own race. The
thinking men of Rotterdam and Stockholm, of Leip-
zig and Bremen, were not cast in the same mould as
the father-confessors from beyond the Alps. National
antipathy, race antipathy, united with intellectual an-
tipathy to weaken papal authority over Northern Eu-
rope and concentrate it nearer to the centre of its

* Loyola was born in 1491 and died in 1556; a Spaniard by birth, a
courtier by education, a soldier by profession; who became " General "
of the Society of J«sus in 1 541 and infused the soldier spirit among his
followers.

[ 20]

CHECK TO SPANISH COLONIZATION

origin. Henceforth the quarrel with Luther resembled
somewhat a war of Latin against Anglo-Saxon or
Germanic civilization. Since the close of the Thirty
Years' War (1648) the area of Protestantism has not
increased appreciably, nor has that of Rome. But in
America the Pope found compensation. The con-
quests of Protestantism in Northern Europe were, in
the mind of Charles V., to be more than matched by
the triumph of the Cross in the vast territories that
had been confided to him by Pope Borgia.

The year 15 19, the year of Martin Luther, was also
the year of Fernando Cortes. What the Pope lost in
Saxony, Spain was conquering in Mexico.

It was in March of 15 19 that Cortes landed on the
Mexican coast in Tabasco with 550 white men, 2,300
Indians, some horses, cannon, and negroes. Of these
only three hundred whites started into the interior.
Cortes had besides, fifteen mounted men, seven
pieces of artillery and 1,300 native soldiers. Many of
his men had refused to go with him and while we are
not disposed to detract from the glory of this soldier,
we are inclined to think that he displayed more cour-
age in managing his own men than in the subjugation
of Montezuma.

The Mexicans had never seen a horse or a man in
armor, or a firearm of any description. They had
no weapons that were in any sense half-way ecjual to
those of Cortes, their country was divided by civil
war, and their religious teachers had spread among
them the fear (jf this invasion. 'IMicy were morally
beaten before the contest commenced, and if at any
stage they fought, it was the fight of nun niade

L --'• J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

desperate by injustice, who fight not in the hope of
victory, but merely to make the tyrant pay dearly for
his triumph.

The courage of Cortes was great, but those inter-
ested in comparing relative bravery might with profit
compare the conqueror of Mexico with the man who
won India for the British Crown. When Clive, with
only two hundred Englishmen and three hundred
Sepoys, marched out to the relief of Arcot in 1751,
it was to meet disciplined armies commanded by Eu-
ropeans, armed as w^ell as himself, famous as horse-
men, and familiar with the white man's methods. No
superstitious awe cowed the natives of East India,
who, when they laid down their arms, submitted not
as to a God, but to a man superior to them in courage,
in physical power, in organizing capacity, and, above
all, in knowledge of government.

Clive entered India as a scourge: he left it amid the
tears of grateful natives.

The Spaniard entered Mexico as a guest, he re-
mained as a scourge, and he left it after three cen-
turies of misrule, amid the curses of an outraged peo-
ple.

Slavery entered Mexico with Cortes and flourished
from the start. The noble Las Casas, in hopes of bet-
tering the lot of the Indians, had urged Charles V. to
encourage negro slavery instead, and to supplement
this by emigration of white labor. Negro slavery was
indeed furthered, but Indian slavery did not cease, nor
was any encouragement given to white labor, for, of
course, no white Spaniard would work in the hot sun
when Indians could be made to work for him. Thus

[ 22 ]

CHECK TO SPANISH COLONIZATION

Las Casas, one of the great '' humanitarians," is prac-
tically the father of the African slave-trade.

Charles V. caused inquiry to be made as to how
many negroes would be needed in the West Indies, and
the Seville Chartered Company answered that 4,000
in all would be sufficient — 1,000 for each of the islands,
— Jamaica, San Domingo, Porto Rico, and Cuba. (In
parenthesis let us note that in 1870 the number of
black slaves in Cuba alone was 360,000.)

The license to import the 4,000 Africans was given
to a Court favorite and he in turn sold it to a Genoese
broker for 25,000 ducats, or about $56,000. This
sum purchased a monopoly of the American slave-trade
for eight years. The Genoese broker, however, had
an interest in keeping up the price of negroes, so he
only supplied a small quantity at a time. This did not
at all satisfy the planters, who met this deficit by vig-
orous slave-raiding among the native Caribs. It
illustrates the sentiment of the time, that while Las
Casas was urging Charles V. to abolish slavery
among Indians, the Bishop of Darien was proving to
this same monarch that these very natives had been
intended by the Almighty as slaves. No wonder that
the " most Catholic " monarch was puzzled when the
Church itself showed doubt! So he passed laws which
sustained Las Casas in theory, while in practice slavery
spread unchecked — b(3th Black and Indian.

The plantation system in Mexico was similar to that
which was inaugurated in the islands; estates were
given to settlers, and these settlers had to cultivate
them for eight years before they got a clear title from
the Crown. '1 he Church entered uj)on this new lield

[ 23 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

with zeal, and in thirty years claimed to have made
9,000,000 converts. These figures are open to ques-
tion, but however they may be modified, there is no
reason to doubt that, in the absence of any compet-
ing religious denomination, the Roman Catholic
Church did make substantial progress in Mexico.

Mexico had not been conquered more than five
years when an expedition w'as fitted out to conquer
Peru (1524). Pizarro was to command the fighting
force, but the profits were to be shared by a little
syndicate consisting of three people — one of them the
Vicar of Panama. In 1526 a written agreement was
drawn up on the subject, securing to each of the three
financial promoters his portion of the expected plun-
der. Each w^as to have his share of profit from the
slave-trade. The Vicar, who had advanced 20,000
pesos (dollars) toward fitting out the expedition, was
to receive one-third of all the land and treasure and
slaves they might secure. Pizarro promised to make
good any losses the Vicar might sustain. He had to
be very careful with the Vicar, for it was known that
this holy man represented some capital subscribed by
the Chief Justice, who was forbidden by law from ap-
pearing in such transactions. It was also necessary to
interest the Governor in the enterprise, and that meant
another share in the concern. However, by joint effort
of these three, Pizarro started out for Peru, with the
blessing of the Church, the protection of the law, and
the good-will of the Governor. That time all went well
with Pizarro.*

" Pizarro was the illegitimate son of a Spanish officer. He was born
about 1471, and was murdered by his own people in his seventieth year.
It is not known how or when he came to America.

[ 24 ]

CHECK TO SPANISH COLONIZATION

On his preliminary journey the natives received him
with hospitaUty, and he returned full of plans for the
enslaving of that unsuspecting people.

First he went to Madrid, where he retailed his dis-
covery and was made Governor-General with all sorts
of privileges. The Vicar was made a bishop, and the
King made him out a patent enjoining above all things
gentleness toward the natives!

Pizarro promised everything, and sailed away in
1 531 to the conquest of Peru.

Skipping details (which are interestingly narrated
by Prescott), in 1532, with one hundred and seventy-
seven soldiers and sixty-seven horses, Pizarro at last
met the Inca at Caxamalca. His patent was dated
1529, and the interval had been devoted to getting
thus far, by a course of plundering raids that had as-
tonished the natives.

The Inca came forth to meet Pizarro unarmed. He
was surrounded by his Court dignitaries, and the great
square was crowded by the curious. He was led to
expect a meeting with Pizarro, but, instead of that, a
Dominican monk came toward him, a book in one
hand, in the other a crucifix. In a loud voice he called
upon the native ruler to turn Christian and acknowl-
edge Charles V. as his master. The Inca was naturally
surprised and annoyed at this unexpected alteration
in the programme, and expressed himself to that effect.
This was what the monk desired. lie made a signal,
fire was opened upon the people by Ihc Spanish guns,
and while the confusion was great the horses charged
in and trampled wnnien and children under foot. In
half an hour Peru became Spanish — a conquest that

I 25 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

makes one blush for the race to which we belong.
There were thousands of corpses to be buried that
night, and the booty was ample. Pizarro celebrated
his victory by a banquet, and by his side sat his vic-
tim; a timid, gentle nature who hoped, perhaps, yet to
serve his country by bowing meekly to the Spaniard's
yoke.

He offered to buy his liberty by filling his dungeon
with gold, and nearly kept his promise. But Pizarro
perhaps concluded that he could fill it himself equally
well, so in 1533 he put his royal prisoner to death — first
taking the precaution to have him baptized in the
same faith as himself!

Hereupon Pizarro divided plunder to the extent of
$17,500,000.

Peru was now divided up among the followers of
the conquerors. Soldiers who had never before known
more than the fare of a Catalonian peasant became
grandees of the soil — were waited upon by many slaves.
There was no more desire to go home. Spain offered
no such fortune to them as was to be found here on
the ruins of Inca palaces.

The maintenance of slavery became here, as else-
where, the most important section in the colonial con-
stitution. Men who had murdered inoffensive women
and children were not likely to deal gently with any-
one attacking what they regarded as their vested in-
terest.

[ 26]

CHECK TO SPANISH COLONIZATION

SPAIN'S FIRST COLONIAL INSURRECTION

Only eleven years after the murder of the Inca
Atahualpa by Pizarro, Spain had to face in Peru her
first colonial insurrection. In 1544 Charles V. at-
tempted to enforce the successive decrees against
slavery, which had uniformly been ignored, notably
one of 1543. In Mexico 150,000 natives were nomi-
nally set at liberty, for the law of Spain proclaimed the
Indians free by virtue of being vassals of Charles V.
But it was too late — vested interests had grown too
strong. In Mexico the law was evaded, for, since it
applied only to vassals of the Crown, the planters who
held slaves pretended that they had been seized for
refusing allegiance, and that plea was rarely found de-
fective by a colonial court. In 1530 slavery was
guarded as jealously in Spanish-America as it was
three centuries later in a part of the United States; no
priest was allowed to teach a native anything that
could harm his master; to sell a horse or fire-arm to
a native was punishable by death.

Charles V. had failed in Mexico; it was not likely,
therefore, that he would succeed in a land so much
farther away as Peru.

When, therefore, the Crown officials arrived with
anti-slavery proclamations, drawn up by Las Casas, it
was the signal for open rebellion, 'i'he agents of the
great Charles were openly insulted and driven out of
Peru. It was a .sort of Boston Tea Party in a rough
way, at least so far as tlic nullificalion of a royal com-
mand was concerned. And. more strange still, this

[ ^7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

monarch, whose little finger was felt the length and
breadth of Europe, bowed to the storm created by his
far-away colony: sent out a white-washing commis-
sion, pardoned the rebels, granted all that the colonists
demanded, and surrendered the natives as slaves to
the white man.

The secret of this cowardice is not far to seek.
Money, money, and only money, was the cry of
Charles. He feared that a fight with the colonists of
Peru would interfere with his supply of cash, and to
accomplish what he wished in Europe money was vital.
It was not to be got from Spain; it could only be
drawn from America. So Charles satisfied his con-
science by promising reforms, and closing one eye
when his laws were treated as dead letters.

Up to this time the power of Spain over her colonies
had been seriously questioned by no European power.
Her claim to the whole of America appeared to be ac-
knowledged by the whole civilized world. The Span-
ish treasure-ships sailed between Spain and her colonies
with no thought of other dangers than those associated
with a journey from Cadiz to Barcelona. Toward the
end of 1568, however, a new viceroy, arriving at Vera
Cruz with a strong fleet, was amazed to find that port
occupied by two EngHshmen. These, in the eyes of
Spain, were pirates, but in the eyes of their fellow-coun-
trymen they were important elements in what made
up the glorious reign of Queen Elizabeth. Sir John
Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake had inaugurated a
series of visits to the Spanish Main, w^hich not merely
caused panic throughout these coasts, but stimulated
the spirit of adventure in everv port of the British

[ 28 ] '

CHECK TO SPANISH COLONIZATION

Isles. The contemporaries of Shakespeare were not
men to fold their hands and look on, while gold and sil-
ver were to be secured at no greater cost than a hard
fight. There has ever been a strong magnetic affinity
between gold mines and men of our race, and we might
almost recognize the landmarks of our progress as
stamped in bullion with such names as Johannes-
burg, California, Australia, and the gold galleons of
Charles V.

Drake and Hawkins are among the world's heroes
because their work was successful and achieved great
national ends. Had they both been hanged by the
Mexican viceroy in 1568 they would have ranked with
men of the Jameson type, in a long list of unsuccess-
ful filibusters. Queen Elizabeth gave them scant coun-
tenance when they sailed forth to risk their lives in her
service, but she gladly honored them when they re-
turned as national heroes. Drake and Hawkins, in
1568, commenced the uphill fight between little Eng-
land and the great Spanish Empire — a fight which en-
listed wide sympathies, in so far as it measured the
strength of Protestantism with papal authority. To
the Spaniards an English sailor was not only a pirate,
but a pirate that had the audacity to deny the author-
ity of the Pope, and for him death was regarded as a
mild punishment. Lucky the English prisoner that
was not handed over to the In(|uisition for torture
before being publicly executed. In " Westward Ho "
Charles Kingslcy lias drawn a dramatic picture of ad-
venturous life in that day. and, startUng as his pages
are, they scarcely outdo the cold recital contained in
official Spanish chronicli-. Imoiu (Ik- liim- of tlic intro-

( -'9 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

duction of the Inquisition into Mexico (1571), 2,000
cases are recorded as having been tried in thirty years,
or more than sixty-six cases each year, more than
one a week — a terrible showing in a young colony
with only a handful of white men and a native popu-
lation almost feminine in its docility. Need we
wonder that at the end of the sixteenth century the
Inquisition, co-operating with the Crown officials, had
produced such misery that the native population had
dwindled to a quarter of what it was when Cortes first
landed in 15 19!

The British sea-fighters of that day were not respect-
able in the eyes of the law, but their freebooting ac-
quired the halo of popular sanction when it became
more generally known that their raids were at the ex-
pense of men who were the enemies of their Queen,
the enemies of their religion, and, above all, capable of
outdoing the Mohammedan corsairs in cruelty toward
the captured.

In the days when Japan was a hermit nation, when
it was death for a Japanese to leave his country or to
entertain a foreigner, we can find no barbarity on their
part equal to that displayed by Spaniards under the
sanction of Christian ecclesiastical authority.

The Chinese are not famous for gentle treatment
of their enemies, but in the three centuries of our in-
tercourse with that nation — making due allowance for
acts of pirates, brigands, and fanatical mobs — the his-
tory of European intercourse will be sought in vain
for official acts of cruelty so barbarous and so frequent
as those which meet us on every page of Spanish colo-
nial history.

[ 30 ]

CHECK TO SPANISH COLONIZATION

English adventurers were soon followed by Prot-
estant Dutch, and French, who might or might not
have been Protestants, but who were no less inter-
ested in intercepting treasure-ships and pillaging the
palaces of viceroys. In the last twenty years of the
sixteenth century eleven silver fleets left Vera Cruz
for Spain; but frequently they did not pay expenses,
because of the cost involved in securing them from
capture. It is impossible to tell exactly how much gold
and silver reached the Madrid treasury during all the
years when the Spanish flag dominated from the
Golden Gate to the Rio de la Plata. Whatever it was,
it was never enough to stop the unceasing clamor for
more, which was the burden of every despatch from
Spain to the New World; it was never enough to es-
tablish agricultural or manufacturing prosperity in the
mother country; it was not enough to bring content-
ment to the people of Spain, nor was it enough to
check the horrible decrease of population among the
natives of America.

Spain was burdened prematurely with a great colo-
nial empire. She had not a teeming indigenous popu-
lation, nor had she manufactures seeking a market.
With the growth of her colonies, we might, even in
that age, have looked for a disposition to encourage
the manufactures of the country at the expense of the
colonies. Spain itself did not invite immigration, al-
though the high cost of living, consequent upon Ihc
discovery of America, would normally have invited a
stream of wage-earners from neighboring white coun-
tries, 'i'hereforc, while Spain was stcadilv bi'ing
drained of her most vigorous children, she diil nolhing

[ 31 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

to fill their places at home. Yet she did not encourage
emigration to the New World beyond the numbers she
thought necessary for conducting the government
and securing tribute from the colonies. She regarded
her Spanish subjects in New Spain merely as an army
of occupation, who were to act as th^y were ordered
to from home, and to have no interests in the New
World save as servants of the Crown. The Govern-
ment passed many regulations discouraging to those
desirous of leaving the mother country. The ships
were carefully overhauled before they sailed, the pro-
posing colonist had to show a special license, and to
secure this license he had to prove, among other
things, that for two generations no member of his
family had fallen under the suspicion of the Inquisition.

Suspicion, indeed, was the key-note of Spanish colo-
nial administration. The governor or viceroy had no
sooner sailed from Spain than a commission followed
him, charged with the duty of reporting secretly about
him. The Crown trusted no one. Every man was
suspected, and the Inquisition machinery was set in
motion for political quite as much as for theological
heresy. In Peru, in the year 1569, the Inquisition had
charge not merely of all breaches of faith, but of the
relations of master and servant and all questions of
morals. The partnership between Church and State,
in Madrid, was reflected in every Spanish colony, the
only difference being that on American soil the Church
was the only partner seriously consulted.

Spain's legislation against emigration was due less
to economic reasons than to her chronic distrust of her
colonists. She instinctively felt her own weakness,

[ 32 ]

CHECK TO SPANISH COLONIZATION

and acted in the belief that her children would break
away from her as a matter of course. She therefore
adopted the policy of keeping them individually weak,
and not only that, but of forbidding on pain of death
all commercial intercourse between one colony and
another. The Spanish Court wanted gold and silver,
but beyond that desired no further commerce with
the New World. She limited the number of ships that
might annually cross the ocean, as she limited the
number of men that sailed in them. She took no
interest in supplying the New World with Spanish
products — she was not intelligent enough even to be
a " protectionist." The looms of France, Holland, and
England furnished the produce which sailed from
Spain for the benefit of her Western possessions.
Local manufacturers complained, but the Government
preferred the ready cash collected at the Custom
House to the remoter advantages springing from busy
factories at home. Thus the very indifference — not
to say contempt — which the Spanish Government en-
tertained for trade, led indirectly to the founding of
mills and factories in America. Already, in the six-
teenth century, guns were cast at Santiago (Cul)a) as
well as in Mexico. The Spanish nobleman's inherited
aversion to all useful occupations blinded him to the
military advantage of having an army of machinists to
fall back upon.

[ 3.^ 1

Ill

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOUTH AMERICA

''All men seek gain and, more or less, love money ; but the way
in which gain is sought will have a marked effect upon the com-
mercial fortunes and the history of the people inhabiting a country. ' *
— Mahan, "Sea Power on History," 50.

Extermination of Natives — Influence of the Jesuits in Paraguay

PIZARRO conquered Peru in 1532; in 1556 it
contained 8,000 Spaniards, of whom 1,000 were
officials and four hundred and eighty-nine great
proprietors. The Governor, even at that early day,
felt that he had too many colonists to manage. So
he made an inventory of his fellow-countrymen, for-
bade any more to come, ordered those already licensed
to stay in one place and not move about; then he col-
lected all those whom he did not fully credit with
legitimate occupations and cut off their heads. Thus
was peace and quiet restored, whites a philosophic
chronicler.

In 1 571, within forty years of Pizarro's conquest,
the ruling Inca was seized by treachery and put to
death, along with a large number of other natives sus-
pected of disloyalty to the viceroy. All the symbols
of native worship were destroyed. Whenever slaves
were wanted, natives were accused of heresy, con-
demned by the Church and handed over to the planta-

[ 34 ]

DEVELOPMENT OF SOUTH AMERICA

tions or mines. The silence of helplessness brooded
over the land of the Incas at the close of the sixteenth
century.

For fifty years Spain sought to subdue Chili, but
there she met with a resistance that indicated a
stronger and more barbarous race of men. The Chil-
ians have a climate and soil congenial to fighters, and
there the Spaniards found no gentle Incas suing for
mercy at the first sight of a white invader. They
tortured their captives and impaled a chief now and
then, but the Chilians fought the more vigorously.
At last (1603) Spain renounced all claim upon that
land and devoted her energies to the more complete
exhaustion of Peru.

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris (1572)
is a convenient date by which to remember the appear-
ance of Jesuits in America, and that date is important
as marking the time when natives commenced to look
upon the Catholic Church with other feelings than
mere fear. The best testimony on this point is fur-
nished, perhaps, by the fact that when after two centu-
ries they were expelled from the Spanish colonies, their
going was mourned as a national calamity — at least
by the natives. In Mexico the edict led to riots, and
in other colonics the Crown had to take military pre-
cautions against demonstrations in their behalf. In
the Jesuit the native recognized not merely a priest
like those of the other orders, but a superior man.
who by his knowledge rai.sed those whom he instructed
to a higher level. It was a Jesuit missionary who. in
1636, made known to us the virtues of quinine. Th.it
priest was n phvsiciaii and healed the Coinitess Chin-

I .LS J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

chon, wife of the Governor, by means of this drug pro-
cured from natives, and named after her Cinchona. In
missionary work the Jesuit of that day was the leader
in his profession — the Society of Jesus was a species
of corps d' elite — an Intelligence Department — a Gen-
eral Stafif in the great army of the Roman Church. In
the higher walks, in subtle negotiations, in dealing with
problems requiring knowledge of science as well as of
men, the Jesuits proved themselves capable of any task
save only that of reforming the Government,

In 1573 there were procured for the Potosi mines
11,199 slaves, while a century later (in 1673), under
the same laws, only 1,673 could be found.

This little item is eloquent on the subject of native
extermination — and as it was in Peru, so was it pretty
much everywhere else. Each year brought to these
gentle creatures yet heavier burdens, until at length
life seemed no longer worth living. Boys of eight
were dragged off to the mines — in some villages not a
man remained after the slave gangs had raided them.
Not one-tenth of the native population which had
originally welcomed the Christian rule of Spain, re-
mained at the end of the eighteenth century. Estates
which formerly had 1,000 laborers, maintained but
one hundred. Villages were taxed without reference
to what they could afford to pay, and every form of
oppression was tolerated for the purpose of wringing
money from impoverished communities.

It was the same old story — the treasury of Madrid
clamored for more and more money — the protests of
honest men were disregarded or else were humored
by decrees which became dead letters. Such a decree

[ 36 ]

DEVELOPMENT OF SOUTH AMERICA

was made for Peru in 1664, but it did no more good
than that of 1543, or the many others pretending to
shield natives from violence. Indeed, the very Church
whose mission it was to protect the helpless, levied its
tithes by violence — according to the report of Juan
de Padilla made in 1657 to the King of Spain.

The year of deliverance for the natives seemed to
have arrived in 1780, when the last of the Incas, after
having pleaded in vain the cause of his oppressed peo-
ple, headed a rebellion. The Spanish Governor, who,
by the way, was noted even among Spaniards for his
cruelty, was publicly put to death after a formal trial
at the hands of a native tribunal. But the rebelHon
was ultimately crushed, and some 80,000 natives were
put to death. It was a massacre on the model of that
in 1572. All the surviving members of the Inca family,
some ninety in number, were put to death; the ruHng
Inca himself was captured by treachery and killed, and
every vestige of native religion was eradicated. When
it became desirable for a white man to plunder a rich
native, it was no longer necessary to charge against
him heathen practice, it was sufficient if heathen
thought were laid at his door.

Need we be surprised to learn that after two hun-
dred years of Spanish dominion in Peru the number
of natives had sunk from 8,000,000 to less than t,ooo,-
000, which number included all races? Spaniards rep-
resented 136,000, African negroes 80,000, mixed blood
244,000. In this census only 609,000 Tndians were
enuincrated. This record puts to the blush all previ-
ous exterminations undcrlrikcn by mere healhen na-
tions.

1 ,1; I

liiLiA'Jl

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

At the time of this census (1794), Peru enjoyed the
Christian ministration of 5,496 monks and nuns — a
number amounting to ahnost one priest for every one
hundred Indians. Even to the mind of a Spanish king
there appeared such a thing as overdoing the outward
manifestations of piety, for, in the same year that the
first Pilgrim Fathers landed in Massachusetts, Philip
III. wrote to his viceroy in Peru complaining that in
Lima the property of the Church covered " more space
than all the rest of the city."

We speak of the Church in general, at the risk of
leaving the impression that one priest was the same as
every other, or that even religious orders resembled
one another closely. In many essential respects the
Roman Catholic Church presents, in the doctrines
which it preaches and in the ceremonial of its outward
worship, a unity which is in marked contrast to the
divergencies among Protestants. The great Reforma-
tion af 1 5 19 found the Roman Church, from the palace
of the Pope to the hut of the parish priest, enfeebled
by absence of discipline — not to say voluptuous living.
Rome was resting on past triumphs, forgetting that
the task of maintaining the fruits of conquest is some-
times more arduous than the conquest itself. The
forces behind Luther fought with the enthusiasm of
moral conviction, led by the most accomplished intel-
lectual soldiers of the day. Rome was staggered by
the blow, and for the moment seemed about to fall —
never to rise again.

But within a few years the whole military situation
was changed. The Protestants, having learned the art
of w^ar in victories over Rome, continued to exercise

[ 38]

DEVELOPMENT OF SOUTH AMERICA

the profession of arms — not in consolidating their em-
pire and arming it against the common enemy, but
in war within itself. Then Rome lifted herself; her
momentary mortification caused her to rise with a
mind purified by adversity; her forces were reorgan-
ized, and she moved forward to the reconquest of Eu-
rope with that essential factor in successful warfare —
unity of command.

Colonial Spain had been nearly a generation in ex-
istence before Rome received the severe lesson of Mar-
tin Luther. Cuba, San Domingo, Hayti, Porto Rico,
Jamaica, all these had been parcelled out and adminis-
tered by monks brought up in the school of self-indul-
gence and illiteracy. Mexico and Peru w'ere conquered
and Christianized by priests whose Christianity had
not yet received a higher stamp than that of Havana.
In 1525 Mexico had monasteries, but nearly half a
century passed before Jesuits came to the New World.
The early Spanish priests came not as missionaries, in
our sense, but as conquerors. They knew not how
to persuade men of another creed and race. A heathen
to them was merely a heretic, and in those days to
give a heretic an opportunity of recanting was in itself
regarded as an act of clemency. The priest virtually
offered the American Indians no choice but slavish
submission to Church authority or death. Those who
hesitated were first tortured; otherwise the process
was the same.

The thousands of priests who since 1492 had been
accustomed to baptize natives at the point of the
bhmdcrbuss or under llie influence of ihumb-scrcws,
were scandalized when I hey learned thai ilisciples of

[ 39]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Loyola were coming to the New World with different
ideas regarding missionary methods.

The Jesuit, feared and hated throughout Protestant
Europe for the slipperiness so liberally mingled with
his erudition, has proved himself in other parts of the
world a civilizing element without a peer in the his-
tory of missionary enterprise. If he has done nothing
more than rebuke the brutal methods of his fellow-
priests in South America, history can afford to give
him generous recognition.

Let us cross the Andes and mark the work inaugu-
rated by two Jesuits who reached the head-waters of
the Parana in 1610. The Spanish Governor of that
territory (now divided between Argentine and Para-
guay) had been for years endeavoring to " pacify " —
that is to say, enslave or exterminate — the natives in
the lands adjoining the River Plate.

The two Jesuits lost no time in plunging into the
wilderness and organizing mission stations on the basis
of a semi-religious, semi-communistic agricultural and
trading society. The Governor gave his aid in the
enforcement of laws against slave-raiding, and this was
all the Jesuits asked for the success of their work. Na-
tives streamed to them from all quarters, attracted by
the intelligence and humanity of Jesuit government,
contrasted with that which they had hitherto associ-
ated with Spanish domination. One station after an-
other was planted, each station a model of profitable
farming enterprise, based upon the consent of those
whose labor made it successful. Each community em-
braced at least 2,500 Indians, at the head of which was
a Jesuit father presidincr over the parish church. Each
' [ 40 ]

DEVELOPMENT OF SOUTH AMERICA

family had a tract of land and these several tracts en-
circled the village, so that each family had an equal
distance to travel for the purpose of tilling the fields.
Beyond the circle of cultivation lay a wide zone of
common or pasture land, on which the flocks and
herds were kept.

Life was conducted on strict but intelligent rules —
at least they were adapted to those directly concerned.
There was no private property among them, save the
ornaments of the women. The right of the individual
was the right to use the land during his lifetime, to
enjoy the fruit of his labor in security — but nothing
more. Inheritance was not permitted. The Church
offered to all who labored a good living and a state of
happiness considerably higher than any known to ex-
ist at that time between Cape Horn and the Golden
Gate — at least for the native Indian.

In this communistic theocracy the Jesuit priest
furnished agricultural implements, land, houses, and
administration. In return for that he exacted three
days' labor out of the week, which the native gave for
the benefit of the community. In other words, the
Jesuit took a raw savage and his family from a life pre-
carious at best, protected him from fellow-savages on
the one hand and slavc-raidcrs on the other, guaran-
teed him and his children the life of a prosperous farmer,
and all this without exacting any previous accumula-
tion of capital, education, or even experience. In the
first generation this was indeed a huge promotion, and
possibly for the second; but as a permanent institution
it was oj)en to the general criticism that in the long
run commimities reared in such ri manner are apt to

I f I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

lack ambition and energy — do not develop into vigor-
ous, self-governing bodies. We can notice this, even
to-day, in the French-Canadian villages of the St.
Lawrence Valley, and in the quality of the emigrants
they send to our factories in Maine and Massachusetts.

The Paraguay colonies had been but ten years in
operation when (1620) they received a severe blow,
not from incursions of warlike Indians, but from their
fellow-Christians — even the Governor of the Colony.

He had married a Portuguese lady who owned
plantations in neighboring Brazil.

For the more profitable working of these estates
he instituted slave-raids, not merely in his own colony,
but among the mission stations of the Jesuits, where
the unsuspecting Indians were easily captured by thou-
sands. Those who had time escaped to the forests
with the Jesuit priests.

It was many years before this governor was tried
for his offence, and when the verdict was made public
it was in the nature of encouragement to future slave-
raiders. He w'as fined a few dollars and suspended
from ofBce for a few years — that was all.

This experience gave the Jesuits warning that in
South America their enemies were of their own house-
hold. They at once commenced to fortify their sta-
tions against their fellow-Spaniards. Military exer-
cises were instituted, and every community was placed
on a war footing. Thus these mission-stations grew
from year to year — centres of civilization in the wilder-
ness of the Plate River.

But the very virtues of the Jesuits made them ene-
mies. The Franciscan Bishop, in particular, hated the

[ 42 ]

DEVELOPMENT OF SOUTH AMERICA

Jesuits. He hated the schools that they organized
among the natives, he hated to see the enormous in-
fluence acquired by a rival order; he carried to Rome
all tales that could undermine Jesuit influence at head-
quarters, and even went so far as to instigate the mob
to burn down the Jesuit buildings in Asuncion. It
was some years before this Bishop was at length
(1648) deposed for his action; then he had to be seized
by violence, for he refused to yield his authority when
summoned in the name of the Pope.

The Jesuits made enemies on all sides in proportion
as they benefited the natives. The colonists demanded
the slave-trade for their estates and were indignant
because the Jesuits withdrew Indians from the slave-
market and educated them in a manner that made
them worthless as slaves. The Jesuits were, in fact,
endangering the prosperity of the colony by advocat-
ing the abolition of slavery. They were a public enemy
and should be exterminated — so thought the planter.
Nor had the traders any love for the Jesuits, for they
were competitors in their markets and could afiford
to undersell. They produced large quantities of cat-
tle, cochineal, tea, and cotton, and shipped to Europe
what they did not sell in Asuncion. It was in 1645
that the Jesuits secured authority to trade; not on
their own account, but for the benefit of their Indians.
But this vexed the colonial traders so much that they
had a law passed forbidding the Jesuits' bringing to
market more than a limit c(l ,-unount of produce.

Finally even I lie (rowii oflicials dislilscd the Jesuits,
becau.se they did not bring money enough to the treas-
ury. They spent it in building new schools and in

I Ki I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

otherwise improving the condition of the natives. Ac-
cording to Spanish precedent elsewhere, all those
Indians would have been more useful to the Spanish
Crown had they been sold to forced labor and thus
furnished a larger revenue. In theory, Madrid was
pleased to have the natives contented, but practically,
every viceroy knew that the favor with which he was
regarded at Court depended upon the amount of
money he was able to send to the treasury, with little
reference to the manner in which it was secured.

Thus colonials of every profession — the Franciscans
at the head — wished ill to the Jesuits in Paraguay.
They were accused of founding a state within a state,
of arming the natives against the authority of the
King, of teaching the natives doctrines prejudicial to
the prosperity of the slave-holding planters.

Finally (1767) the Jesuits were driven from Para-
guay, and the mission-stations, which they had built
up with so much labor and intelligence, were destroyed.
These very missions were indeed the means of ruining
them. The Governor demanded their immediate re-
moval at an impossible time and to an impossible place,
and because a slight hesitation was shown, troops were
called, the stations attacked, the buildings plundered,
and the natives scattered into the forest once more.

The Jesuit fathers were deported to Europe like
malefactors, and the colonists rejoiced at the expul-
sion of the only obstacle that had hitherto stood be-
tween them and their prey — the Indian whom they
desired as a slave.

The missionary stations, w'hich in 1767 contained
144,000 workmen, at the end of the century had only
45,000.

[ 44]

THE RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA
AND MANILA DOWN TO THE END OF
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

"/ think that he, while Military Governor, committed an egre-
gious error and did great injustice to the Chinese by introducing into
the Philippines the Chinese Exclusion Jet, which has stirred up
race prejudice and done harm to those Islands.^'' — Letter ofWv
Ting Fang, Chinese Minister to Washington, February, 1901, re-
ferring to the American Governor at Manila, General Otis.

The Effect of Freebooting on the Development of Colonial
Trade in the Sixteenth Century — English Occupation of
Havana and Manila — Treatment of Chinese

SPAIN enjoyed the use of Cuba for three hundred
and eighty-seven years before she finally with-
drew (1898) in favor of the United States. Yet
as soon as the United States became a nation (1783),
she commenced to weaken the hold of Spain on Cuba.
Yankee traders were no less keen than those of Lon-
don or Amsterdam and they had the added advantage
of a nearer market. All trade with the Spanish colo-
nies had to be more or less contral^and; and the swift
coasting schooners of IJaltimoro and Salem soon be-
came familiar off the Cuban coast, 'ihey were smug-
glers in the eyes of the authorities, benefactors in the
eyes of the people, and a source of profit to both. It

I -IS I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

was Spain's hatred for England which led her, in 1777,
to join with France in creating the American Republic,
a neighbor that soon drove her flag from Florida and
California, supplanted her language by that of Eng-
land, and paved the way for such an ascendancy in
the Western World that one by one her colonies be-
came independent, with constitutions modelled on that
of the United States.

History affords scarcely another example of fatuity
so glaring as that of Spain, governing her own colonies
despotically and yet assisting in the creation of an
Anglo-Saxon democracy at her gates. She recognized
her blunder almost as soon as it was committed, for,
in 1783, Count Aranda, the Prime Minister of Charles
III., elaborated a scheme intended to protect Spain
against a revolutionary movement such as had torn
the American Colonies from England. He proposed
the creation of three kingdoms; one in IMexico, an-
other in Peru, and the third to consist of all the rest
of the territory not already occupied, to be called Costa
Firme. These territories were to be ruled by princes
of the royal house, who should be bound to the mother
country by strong treaties, involving trade reciprocity
and common action in war, trade with France, but
none with England. This scheme, which was long
and seriously discussed, proves that Spain herself
recognized in a shadowy way that her great empire
could not much longer be held together unless the
colonies were given some measure of self-government,
however small.

The American Revolution was a shock to colonial
Spain no less violent than was the Protestant Refor-

[ 46 ]

RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA

mation to the Roman Church in 15 19. The rum-
blings of the French Revolution were already audible
in Europe, and there were statesmen even in Spain
who thought it better to offer their subjects some-
thing, rather than expose themselves to losing all.

But, with strange blindness, the Spanish Govern-
ment postponed the matter until it was too late.

Cuba was a much neglected colony in her earlier
years. It is only in our lifetime that Spain has been
given to speaking affectionately of her " Pearl of the
Antilles," Indeed, Spanish affection for Cuba sug-
gests the analogy afforded by the love of France for
Alsace-Lorraine — a love which was not conspicuous
until the German flag waved over Metz and Stras-
burg. Fifty years after the first voyage of Columbus
Cuba had only 1,000 white settlers — and at this time
Mexico and Peru were already coveted prizes of Court
favorites.* Freebooters constantly harassed her
shores, and in 1555 Havana was burned by pirates.
Drake and his compeers blockaded the island success-
fully for many years, and intercourse with the mother
country was throughout the sixteenth century almost
entirely cut off. In 1569 the island was bankrupt and
applied to the Viceroy of Mexico for an advance of
money to be used in erecting the most necessary de-
fences. The money was advanced, and from that time
on Cuba's annual deficit was made up by Mexico, as
long as the latter remained tied lo Spain.

After a hundred years of .Spanish goxernineni, and
in spite of the high price of sugar in l''uropc, Cuba

• In 1540 Cuha conlaiiicd 600 African iicj;r()csanil 2,000 native Indian
slaves.

f 17 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

shipped scarcely any of that commodity abroad, owing
to bad economic and poHtical administration.

Most of the Indians had died out. African labor was
inadequate, and the little trade that existed was due
to the enterprise of pirates, smugglers, and contra-
band slavers.

Spain's chief colonial blessings, though she did not
at the time recognize them as such, came from Eng-
land, whose freebooters neutralized the bad effects of
Spanish legislation and saved the colonists from the
disastrous results of commercial isolation. In 1655
Oliver Cromwell did Spain a favor by depriving her of
Jamaica, from which island freebooters of all nations
operated successfully in educating Spanish sentiment
in regard to the value of sea-power as an element in
commercial prosperity.

England, from this time on, undertook police duty
in the West Indies and upheld Spain's commercial
treaties. The Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, forms an-
other epoch in Spanish colonial history, for by that
instrument England acquired the legal right of bring-
ing slaves to Spanish America.* This did not amount
to much on the surface, because contraband trade in
Africans had been carried on for nearly two centuries
by enterprising seamen of all nations; but England
now acquired the privilege of entering Spanish-Ameri-
can ports openly and there disposing of cargoes. She
was limited, it is true, to negroes, but under the pretext
of landing negroes, English ships landed almost any-

* Sir John Hawkins brought cargoes of slaves to the Spanish colonies
in 1562, 1564, and 1567. This gallant freebooter died at sea off Porto
Rico in 1595. after sixty-two years of life, most of which was spent in
fighting Spain.

[ 48 ]

RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA

thing else they saw fit. England soon had the bulk
of the American trade, while Spain's share was only
twenty-two per cent. It has been Spain's fortune,
from the time of Elizabeth to the present day, to have
been chronically at war with England and the de-
scendants of England, and, while in those wars she
has been uniformly unsuccessful, it has been only
through these enemies that she has enjoyed the little
commercial prosperity which has fallen to her lot.

Throughout the seventeenth century Spain's inter-
course with her colonies almost ceased because of
pirates. Vera Cruz was for three days plundered by
these highwaymen of the water, and, when they finally
disappeared with their booty, the Spaniards, instead
of rushing to arms, crowded into the churches and
gave thanks for deliverance!

When at last Spain made concessions to England,
it was not in any hope of mutual benefit, but merely to
escape a piracy which had nearly destroyed what little
shipping she possessed. In 1654 Mexico sent her
" record " cargo of precious metals to Spain — after-
ward the buccaneers ruled too strongly. San Do-
mingo at that time contained 10,000 pirates. The
word " pirate," indeed, had become synonymous with
navigation, and even our Puritan forefathers showed
scant scruple in undertaking commercial enterprises
which nowadays would end in penal servitude, if not
the gallows.

English blood seems to be happier (jn board shi|)
than docs that of the Spaniard or oven the Frenchman;
and this may explain why, allhough Providence thrust
islands in the C(jurse of her ships, Spain neglected these

I A^) I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

watery possessions in favor of the continent, where she
felt more secure. At no time in her history was she
able to protect her islands from depredation, and their
inhabitants had to abandon the coasts and take refuge
in the interior if they wished to escape the raids of the
enemy. The English, on the other hand, looked upon
the sea as their best friend, and the colonies that at-
tracted them most were those with salt water about
them. The landmarks of England's colonial progress
bear the names of Barbados, Jamaica, Hong-Kong
and Singapore, Bermuda, Mauritius, St. Helena.
Hardly had England set foot in the West Indies than
her colonial produce began to outstrip that of Spain,
England accomplishing more in ten years than Spain
in a century.

The treaty with England (of 171 3) was beginning
to bear fruits in Cuba, when Spain, in 171 7, passed a
law compelling all tobacco-planters to sell their prod-
uce to Government agents at Government prices. This
caused the first riot in the island. Havana refused
obedience and shipped the obnoxious officials back to
the mother country. Spain yielded for the moment,
but in 1739 gave the monopoly of the tobacco trade
to a company — a heavy blow to Cuban trade. The
shareholders in 1746 divided thirty per cent, profit,
but that did not comfort those at whose expense this
profit was made. In 1760, a century and a half after
its first settlement, Cuba had only 140,000 settlers,
while French Hayti had 400,000, scattered over five
hundred plantations. At the same time San Domingo
(Spanish), representing four-fifths of the whole area,
had only 40,000 population. While the French colony

[ 50 ]

RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA

exported 6,000,000 francs' worth, San Domingo had
to receive an annual subsidy from Mexico. Jamaica
in the same year was a large exporter of sugar, rum,
and coffee.

In such a discouraging state of Spanish-American
trade Cuba sighed for a change. It came in 1762, when
there appeared before Havana fifty-three British men-
of-war escorting two hundred transports, the whole
representing a force of twenty British regiments, who
soon captured Havana, secured a booty of £736,000,
and proceeded to give the country a better administra-
tion than it had ever enjoyed before, or has since, with
the possible exception of General Ludlow's brief term
of office immediately after the Spanish-American War.

The port was immediately thrown open to English
trade, and from having only half a dozen ships in a year,
Havana now, in the ten months of English occupa-
tion, had a thousand ships visit her port. In this short
time she imported 3,000 negroes, as many as during
twenty years of Spanish monopoly. The island com-
menced to flourish again; in fact, she has flourished
under every event which has mortified Spain.

Within three months of the capture of Cuba, another
British fleet (under Admiral Cornish) appeared before
Manila, landed 3,700 men, and captured it. It would
have astonished the England of that day to be told
that one of her colonies would, in less than a century
and a half, be strong enough to attack both those
islands and hold titoii!

England kej)l llu-ni niitil I he pracc of 1763. Short
as her occupation was, she gave the Spanish colonists
a taste for better administration and more liberty.

f 5' J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Let us note that the Cuban accepted cheerfully
the rule of the Anglo-Saxon in 1762, as he did in 1898
as well — for a time. In the Philippines, however, the
natives would have none of the new regime, and Eng-
land found herself engaged in guerrilla warfare, which
promised to drag itself out indefinitely.

It seems a long jump from Manila to Cuba, but in
that day the Pope chose to regard the Philippines not
as a part of the East Indies, but as a dependency of
Mexico! Manila merchants were not allowed to trade
with China, only six hundred miles away, because that
would give offence to the Portuguese at Macao, who,
by the same Pope, had been presented with all the
eastern hemisphere — or at least with as much of it as
they saw fit to appropriate.

So Manila was ordered to trade exclusively with the
port of Acapulco in Mexico, whence her produce was
carried across the Isthmus, ultimately reaching Seville
or Cadiz as part of a Mexican consignment.

The history of the Philippines is not very interest-
ing reading — it is mostly a repetition of the same sort
of thing, insurrections put down — execution and tort-
ure of native rebels — quarrels between the Arch-
bishop and the Governor — plagues and epidemics —
piratical raids — friction between slave-owners and
abolitionists — between merchants and officials.

The first picturesque event in the history of the isl-
and was in 1574, when an enterprising Chinese admiral,
with sixty-two junks, sailed up to the mouth of the
Pasig River and demanded the surrender of the town.
His proposition was declined, whereupon the Chinese
landed, drove the Spaniards before them, penetrated

[ 52]

RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA

to the fort and set fire to it. Ultimately the Celestial
invaders were ejected, but they left behind them a
reputation for bravery and enterprise that made Span-
ish ofificials feel uncomfortable whenever rumor of
Chinese pirates was in the air.

In the history of Manila the only people who have
ever penetrated that fort as enemies have been Anglo-
Saxon and Chinese. The Chinese, from time imme-
morial, have regarded the Philippines as within their
" sphere," although they have never formulated a
Monroe doctrine which the rest of the world has felt
compelled to respect.

When the British took Manila, in 1762, they re-
ceived much assistance from the Chinese population,
for, owing to England's generous treatment of natives
in India, the Chinese had already learned to respect
British justice no less than the power of her guns.
With this in mind, I was not surprised, in 1898, to find
the victory of Admiral Dewey and the United States
troops celebrated by English flags hung out from every
Chinese house in Manila. In some way they associated
England with America, partly because of the common
language, partly from the good relations existing be-
tween the English warships and our own, largely, per-
haps, because English and American merchants formed
one club for social purposes. It may be, too, that the
Chinese sought to [)rotect themselves against possible
pillage by claiming the rights of alleged British sub-
jects; for at one time it was not quite clear as to
whether Americans, Spaniards, or Eilipinos would con-
trol the situation. Pillaging had been allowed after
the conquest of 1762, although for only three hours.

[ 5^ I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

But as the English had at that time native Indian
troops in the expedition, I have no doubt that three
hours proved fairly adequate to all reasonable require-
ments. In 1762 the Chinese had particular reason for
not loving the Spaniards, for they were then compelled
to choose between leaving the island and joining the
Church of Rome. To those of us who know the China-
man, the inference is reasonable that the larger pro-
portion found no difificulty in reconciling ancestral
worship and " Joss pidgen " with transubstantiation
and the immaculate conception.

John Chinaman accommodates himself to every pos-
sible contingency. In one corner of his Joss house he
glorifies St. Francis with candles and holy water, in
another he squares himself with his native demons.
The shrine of a converted Chinaman was about as puz-
zling to a Grand Inquisitor, as are to the average Prot-
estant an altar and reredos in a ritualistic Anglican
church.

As in Cuba, so in the Philippines, the first and the
greatest question that agitated the Spanish Court
was the treatment of natives. One-half of the Church
maintained that slavery was contrary to Christian
ethics; the other half insisted, with equal parade of
scholarship and vastly more vehemence, that slavery
was an essentially elevating institution, particularly
when it was a heathen who was made to work and a
Spaniard or Christian who profited thereby. With
this question was entangled its corollary whether the
Filipinos should be made Christians by violence, or
whether they should be persuaded by reason. Evi-
dently the Bishop of Manila had achieved scant sue-

[ 54 ]

RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA

cess by the exercise of the gentle methods, for he
stoutly maintained toward the end of the sixteenth
century that it was the duty of the Church to convert
every native or put him to death.

The Church held that heresy was a capital ofifence,
and we cannot see how a well-brought-up bishop of
that day could be pardoned for allowing mere human
sentimentality to stand between heretical or heathen
natives and the enforcement of " Christian " law.
The quarrel grew so fierce that finally the Crown in-
terfered and drew up regulations for the government
of the island which practically delivered the natives into
the hands of bishops and governors, with no protection
save that implied in a " recommendation to mercy."

Henceforth each native was to pay a poll-tax of eight
Reals (one dollar) annually. Of this poll-tax ninety
per cent, went to the Spanish Crown, the clergy, and
the military establishment. The remaining one Real
was nominally used for the benefit of the colony. But
the evidence on that point is not satisfactory.

As Spain then had only a very small proportion of
the natives under her dominion, and for that matter
never succeeded in completely colonizing Luzon after
four hundred years of effort, this poll-tax proved a very
unsatisfactory one, at least to those who counted all
Filipinos as subject to its provisions.

A (Icrman official who had been stationed in Africa,
once described to mc the panic created among his
colleagues when regulations and forms were received
from I'crlin, calling for detailed information regarding
the native capacity for bearing taxation. Column after
column was to be filled in with certificates of birth,

r ss 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

character of occupation, nature of dwelling, and the
many sources of income known to a Prussian police-
man. The panic in the Government Bureau was as
nothing compared with the blank amazement of a
naked Kaf^r whose worldly inventory comprised a
war-club and a hut of reeds.

Imagine this arboreal savage at his breakfast in the
top of a cocoanut tree suddenly challenged by a Prus-
sian gendarme with an order to come down and pay
his income tax!

Governments that play with colonies perform
strange freaks!

Spain would have lost her colonies much earlier but
for the fact that her officials on the spot treated the
law of Madrid to a great extent as a dead letter. The
King abolished tithes, abolished slavery, gave land
only to those who were bona-fide settlers, and even
forbade missionary or military expeditions unless the
bishop gave his consent. But these provisions are
hardly worth enumerating, because, practically,
through the parish priest and the local governor, the
Church squeezed out of the native all that could be
squeezed, and the treasury of Madrid received what-
ever balance there was when all the white officials in
Manila had been satisfied. Cuba and Manila are two
of the richest islands in the world; yet, as in the case
of Cuba, so with Manila, as long as she was isolated
from all but Spanish influence she was a drag upon the
mother country.

Even so late as the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury Philippine afifairs were submitted by the King to
a special committee, and it was determined to abandon

[ 56]

RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA

them. That this was not done was owing to the Friar
Moraga, a man of burning zeal in missionary work,
who threw himself at the feet of Philip III. and begged
passionately that the " most Christian monarch "
might not abandon all these heathen souls to damna-
tion! The King yielded for reasons wholly theolog-
ical, and Mexico was once more ordered to saddle
herself with the deficits in the PhiHppines.

Of course freebooting in Eastern waters contrib-
uted to Phihppine distress, almost as much as it did
in the West Indies — the Dutch and EngHsh frequently
intercepting the Mexican fleet, to say nothing of
occasionally plundering towns on the coast. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century Phihppine trade
was so crippled by the regulations of the mother coun-
try that Manila could not even fill the three annual
galleons permitted by law. Her merchants were not
allowed to send Chinese goods to Mexico (and thus
on to Spain), although at the same time Portugal had
direct communication with Macao. The Mexican lady
who wanted a dress of Chinese silk had to order it
from Spain after a journey more than half way round
the world. That very piece of silk had probably
passed her own door on the way to Spain. But even
this proved insufficient " protection," for, in 1718, in
consequence of petitions from such silk manufactur-
ing towns as Toledo, Valencia, and Granada, trade in
Chinese silk was absolutely forbidden to the Philip-
pines. This law was thought so cruel by the Mexican
colonists, as well as by those in tlu- rhilippinos, thai
the Viceroy of Mexico made rcprescnlatiotis at homo,
in hope of having it resc-iiidcd. Jhil, on the contrary,

I 57 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

this drastic measure was made even more sweeping,
and no Chinese silk was permitted either in Spain or
any of her colonies. The most inveterate " protection-
ism " of modern times seems enlightened after this.
The result of this " high protection " was, that the
Chinese market which Spain renounced was amply
exploited by the enterprising seamen of England and
Holland; and the American-Spaniards, no less than
those at home, found that contraband silk was quite
as becoming and no dearer than any other. So Span-
ish trade suffered, colonial progress was checked, and
the only ones that flourished were the smugglers and
officials. In 1734 the effect of this policy showed itself
so clearly, particularly in the falling off of receipts from
Manila, that the law was modified and the far Eastern
colony was allowed to send annually to Acapulco, Asi-
atic goods worth 500,000 pesos (dollars), and to take
in return goods from Mexico worth up to 1,000,000
pesos.

The effect of this slight liberality was immediate and
refreshing. Business improved all around. There was
a " boom " in Manila Bay. Everybody who had a dol-
lar or could borrow one helped to load the limited
number of ships permitted by Government. Soldiers,
officials, priests, widows — all rushed to share in the
profits of the newly opened trade. The rich monas-
teries advanced money at rates fluctuating between
twenty-five and fifty per cent. The Crown officials
connived at the ships carrying double or treble what
was allowed by law. The captain of a merchantman
received 40,000 pesos as his share of the venture, the
navigator got 20,000, the supercargo got nine per cent.

I 58]

RELATIONS OF SPAIN WITH CUBA

— everybody, excepting the natives, made money
rapidly. Those were golden days in the Philippines,
but they were of short duration; for the home govern-
ment soon commenced once more to legislate — this
time in favor of expelling the Chinese (1755). Im-
mediately the receipts from the Philippines fell ofif
30,000 pesos a year, in spite of the large numbers of
Chinamen who permitted themselves to be baptized.
The Government sought to replace the Chinese by a
joint stock company, but this institution soon went
into bankruptcy.

When England handed back the Philippines in 1763,
the Spaniards put to death 6,000 Chinamen by way
of a warning, and tried to revive trade in the old way;
but it was like flogging a horse that has fallen from
overwork. In 1783 Carlos III. took 4,000 shares in a
joint-stock company that was to monopolize Philip-
pine trade and secure vast profits to the shareholders.
The royal Court of Spain stood in regard to the ex-
ploitation of the Philippines much as the British
aristocracy stood toward the Chartered Company
which developed Rhodesia and sent Dr. Jameson to
Johannesburg. This company ultimately collapsed,
but for a time it served a good purpose, for the Crown,
in its greed for money, permitted reforms which indi-
rectly benefited both the islands and the mother-coun-
try. This company was permitted henceforth to trade
directly with Spain, without having to pass through
Acapulco as formerly. Ships might be bought any-
where, for the space of two years; ship material might
enter Spain free of dnty, likewise the wares of the
Philip])ines. Spaniards were now permitted to bring

[ 59 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Chinese and Japanese products from IManila direct to
Spain. Four per cent, of the profits were dedicated
to the agricultural development of the colony, but this,
as well as the other provisions of thi^ comparatively
liberal character, was neutralized by the favoritism
shown in the selection of officials.

However, from now on in the history of the Philip-
pines, large consignments of pepper, sugar, cotton,
tobacco, and indigo figure. The company was saved
from bankruptcy in 1825 by advances made by the
King, but finally disappeared in 1834.

The nineteenth century opened a new era for the
Philippines, as well as for Cuba. The two revolutions,
in France and the United States, had found an echo
throughout the world — even in the colonies of Spain.
The Jesuits, who might have directed, if not stemmed,
this current, had been expelled, and public sentiment
sought its leaders among men whose dominant pas-
sion was hatred of Spain — hatred of her ignorant friars
— hatred of her corrupt officials. Little by little Spain
had revealed to her own children that she was not
merely cruel and rapacious, but worse than that — she
was weak.

[ 60 ]

THE TOTTER AND TUMBLE OF SPAIN'S
COLONIAL EMPIRE

"Napoleon had every manner of success a-nd abused his good fort-
une to the uttermost {sans mesure^y

— Talleyrand, '* Memoires," I., 302.

Influence of the Monroe Doctrine on South America — The Fight
Between Spain and Her Colonies

IN 1823 President James Monroe announced to
the powers of Europe that the United States
claimed a certain protecting influence over the
whole of the American Continent. Here are some of
the words he used, the sum of the so-called Monroe
Doctrine: " We (the United States) could not view an
interposition for oppressing them (the Spanish-Ameri-
can Republics), or controlling in any other manner
their destiny, by any European power, in any other
light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposi-
tion toward the United States . . . the American
Continents should no longer be subjects for any new
luir()])ean colonial settlement."

That declaration virtually guaranteed the indepen-
dence of every Spanish colony from California to Cape
Horn. And when, shortly after that, the I'ritish (iov-
ernment, under the leadership of ("anning,* conlirmed

•George rimniiu'., Imni in 1770, was Minister of l-'orcign Allnirs
from 1K22 until his curly <l<:illi in 1K27.

[ 61 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the position of the United States by recognizing the
independence of the different repubHcs, all talk of re-
conquering the lost colonies was smothered and the
now liberated territories were free to fight one another
and make revolutions as often as they chose without
any interference, at least from Madrid.

But Spain tottered a long while before she finally
fell. It shows that there were some good elements in
her administration, mingled with the much that was
bad, for no system wholly corrupt could have spread
one language and one church creed over so vast a
territory in so short a time.

Spain's administration of her colonies was bad from
the point of view of the political economist, but it did
not shock those who suffered under it half so much
as it shocks us of to-day.

The impulse which finally drove the mother country
from the mainland of America was not far removed
from the one which united the thirteen colonies of the
United States in 1776. In both cases it was felt that
the attitude of the home government was not merely
unjust but arrogant; the personal pride of the colonists
was hurt quite as much as their pockets. The officials
of the home government not only regarded the colo-
nies as means of enriching themselves and the Crown,
but treated their colonial fellow-Spaniards with indif-
ference, if not contempt.

So long as Spain was overwhelmingly strong the
Spanish creole submitted with a fairly good grace; but
the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, re-
sulting in Spain's being treated as a province of France,
raised among Spanish-Americans the feehng that their

[ 62 ]

TUMBLE OF SPAIN'S COLONIAL EMPIRE

national glory was as safe on the River Plate or
under the shadow of Chimborazo as in the palaces of
Madrid.

Though Spain showed herself incapable of defending
her transatlantic possessions, she still refused to allow
them any voice in the management of their own af-
fairs and persisted in excluding Creoles (native colonial
Spaniards) from all positions of responsibility. Out of
one hundred and sixty viceroys of Spain, only four have
been Creole — out of six hundred and two Captains-
General, only fourteen .have been Creole. Suspicion
and jealousy marked Spain's attitude toward her far-
away children, and who can wonder if they failed to
show loyalty when she needed their help?

In 1898 the public sentiment of Spanish America
was with the mother country against the United States;
in 1823 the United States was hailed as the unselfish
big brother protecting the younger republics against
the mother's cruelty — so much have times changed!

During the wars of revolutionary France against the
coalition of monarchical Europe, Pitt was approached
with a scheme for assisting in the wrenching of the colo-
nies from Spain. A revolutionary society was formed
in London with the avowed purpose of liberating the
different South American republics; but the peace of
Basel (1795) checked the movement for a time; at
least, so far as I'^ngland could officially appear in the
matter, liut war soon broke out again, and after the
destruction of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafal-
gar (1805), T'jigland felt her hands free.

Admiral Popham was at Cape Town. He had ar-
ranged to take over Sonlli Africa from tlie Dulcli, and

[ 63 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

therefore, in 1806, he sailed across the South Atlantic
and dropped anchor in the river Plate.

He had been induced to land here through repre-
sentations of the revolutionary party. They found no
difificulty in occupying Buenos Ayres, though General
Beresford, who commanded the land force, had under
him only 1,800 men. The English acted here as they
had in Havana and ]\Ianila in 1762, granted complete
freedom of worship, and opened the port to free trade,
at least with England — an enormous concession com-
pared with what the colonies had formerly enjoyed.
Commerce at once revived, shipping crowded the river,
and the short British occupation made it impossible
for that colony ever again to rest contented under a
policy of Spanish exclusiveness.

But, though the revolutionists had fought to drive
Spain out, they had no mind to permit the English to
stay in. So now they turned upon their liberators,
after the manner of the Filipinos in 1898.

With that revulsion of feeling so frequently seen in
hot-blooded races, Spaniards and Creoles forgot their
feud and united in common hatred of the hereditary
enemy, the hated Anglo-Saxon. Within two weeks
of the first occupation of Buenos Ayres by the English,
the latter were attacked by an Argentine force and
driven to take refuge in the citadel. The " patriots "
who had promised Admiral Popham an easy victory
over the country, now disappeared.

In June of 1807 reinforcements arrived from Eng-
land — 12.000 men on eighteen warships, and eighty
transports, commanded by General Whitelock. To
the amazement of the world this force failed in their

[ 64 ]

TUMBLE OF SPAIN S COLONIAL EMPIRE

attempt to take the town from the Argentines; on the
contrary they were forced to march back to their ships
and embark for home. It was not a mihtary disaster
of the first rank, and a nation that had just won the
battle of Trafalgar and was on the eve of driving Napo-
leon's army from Spain had no need to be cast down
by so small a check, but considering the nature of the
foe and the quality of the invading force, it stands out
among memorable British losses — such as Majuba
Hill, Saratoga, Yorktown, New Orleans, Colenso —
the same old story — brave men; incompetent gen-
erals.

This was the time of great battles. The year 1805
was the year of Austerlitz as well as Trafalgar. 1806
was the year of Jena, when Napoleon chased the whole
Prussian army from the borders of South Germany
clear to the edge of Russia, whipping it into shreds.
1807 was the year of Friedland. The next year af-
forded Napoleon his " Parterre of Kings at Erfurt."
In 1809 came more crash of big armies, the battle of
Wagram in the midst. The Russian campaign was in
1812, in 181 3 was that of Leipzig, in 1814 was the
capture of Paris, and Waterloo came in 181 5. Any
gaps in these events were made up by Wellington's
fighting in Spain, and England's small expeditions in
every part of the world. No wonder, then, that the loss
of Puienos Ayrcs should have been (juickly forgotten.

But for Si)anish colonial history no event was more
important than this. The news of it was an insi)ira-
ti(jn to every revolutionary committee, not merely (^n
the Plate, but in Chili and I Vru, Venezuela and Mexico,
Colonists iiad shown what llicy could do. They had

f (>S I '

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

not merely stood their own against Spain, they had
saved Argentine from the foreign enemy — no less an
enemy than England! While Spain was powerless to
protect, the colonists had themselves organized a mili-
tary force and achieved victory without any assistance
from the mother country!

Henceforth there was no more thought of tolerating
the tyranny of former days. The colonists w'ere, many
of them, ready to remain Spanish and monarchists on
the basis of just and equal treatment with those of the
mother country, but Spain lacked the courage, or un-
derstanding, to seize the opportunity thus offered. She
let things drift — allowed the revolutionary w'ave to
increase in magnitude, and made concessions when it
was too late. If ever she felt a trifle relieved from
momentary fear, her arrogance returned, and she
sought to revive the commercial restrictions which had
done so much mischief in the past. The short English
occupation had united all classes of colonists on one
subject at least, that though they w'ished no British
soldiers, they meant to have the liberty which those
soldiers had shown them how to procure.

In the same year that Prussia rose against the French
yoke (1813), Argentine declared herself free, and from
that day to the proclamation of President Monroe
(1823), her struggle for independence was a perpetual
source of encouragement to the rest of South America,
aided by the events on the continent of Europe.
When Spain w^as at the feet of Napoleon, her colonies
were proportionately elated; but when Wellington
finally drove the French out of the Peninsula, Repub-
lican prospects declined, for now the mother country

[ 66 ]

TUMBLE OF SPAIN'S COLONIAL EMPIRE

became free to fight her rebelUous offspring. Argen-
tine alone maintained practical self-government, if not
complete independence, throughout those stormy
years of revolution and counter-revolution. In 1810,
while a Spanish viceroy was nominally ruHng the coun-
try, a popular assembly collected the taxes, conducted
the government, and tolerated the viceroy as an orna-
mental feature. Half of the ruling assembly consisted
of Creoles, and the presence of the Spanish flag affected
but little the progress of the country.

The monarchs formed a " Protective Union," a syn-
dicate, a species of Trust, whose object was to guaran-
tee perpetuity of monarchy by divine right. The po-
litical police exaggerated, where it did not invent, tales
of revolutionary attempts, and it is possible that most
of the monarchs constituting the so-called Holy Alli-
ance were sincere in the belief that they were serving
God by suppressing every manifestation of popular
desire for self-government. England — at least gov-
ernmentally — waged war against political discontent
with nearly the same weapons as those used by Alex-
ander of Russia. Discontent was wide-spread through-
out Great Britain; there was rioting in many cities.
The troops which had distinguished themselves on con-
tinental battle-fields now had to turn their bayonets
against the mobs of their home counties. The public
mind was agitated by plots for assassinating not only
monarchs, but cabinet ministers, and thus for a time
a majority of the English Parliament was ready to sup-
port any measure opposed to revolution, and, conse-
(|ucntly, to sustain Spain against licr republican colo-
nics. But there was a limit to Knglisli strength and

[ ^>7]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

English patience. Spain proved so helpless even at
home, that her pretensions to subdue the American
rebels appeared almost grotesque. In 1819 she gath-
ered a large force together near Cadiz, proposing a
grand reconquest of South America under the sym-
pathetic auspices of the Holy Alliance. But the offi-
cers who were to command the expedition had not
been paid, and they were but half satisfied when the
Government promised them each an increase of rank
in lieu of cash. The men, however, 22,000 in number,
were constantly reminded by friends of liberty that al-
ready Spain had sent, since 181 1, 42,000 men, who had
been killed either by disease or by the bullets of the
enemy. Time dragged; the Government had not pro-
vided enough transports; the feeling against the war
received new strength, and it culminated in a military
revolution which put an end for the moment to all
transatlantic schemes.

Then came the upsetting of the Spanish Government
at home, and the substitution in England of a Liberal
Ministry (1822) in lieu of Castlereagh.

Canning saw in the independence of the Spanish
republics advantages of trade far outnumbering those
to be got from supporting the pretensions of a mon-
archy which had so frequently demonstrated its in-
capacity for governing either at home or abroad.

In supporting the United States and the Monroe
Doctrine, he gratified the love of liberty, which is in-
stinctive in English people; he secured the hearty in-
dorsement of the British merchant, who appreciated the
commercial advantages involved; he secured the good-
will of the United States. President Monroe recog-

[ 68]

TUMBLE OF SPAIN'S COLONIAL EMPIRE

nized the independence of Venezuela in 1822, and
Europe immediately called a conference of the great
powers for the purpose of sustaining the pretensions
of Spain.

England, in 1822, not only declined to attend this
conference (of Verona) but remarked pointedly to
Spain that, in case she proceeded with violence against
her colonies, the British Cabinet would recognize their
independence.

And this happened when George III. had been dead
but two years, in the reign of a George scarcely less
hostile to popular government!

History moved rapidly in those days. In 1823 the
Spanish King, Ferdinand VII., made another effort to
unite the Holy Alliance in his favor — this time at Paris,
but England now went a step further and said she
would be present only on condition that the Spanish
colonies be recognized as independent.

Another effort in 1824 ended with even less encour-
agement — England in that year recognizing the inde-
pendence of Argentine by making a commercial treaty
with her.

These annual surprises culminated in 1825, when
England notified the world that she was sending diplo-
matic representatives to the different South American
republics in spite of Spanish protests.

The wave of revolution, which swept the Spanish
flag from the mainland of America, eventually produced
a large number of allcgc<l republics with constitutions
framed on that of VVasIiingloii and Adams, Ii'lT(.Mson
and Franklin, lint liu re wore several efforts made to
secure independence inidcr a monarchy, showing that

I <->•) 1

T HE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the plan suggested in 1783 by a Spanish Crown Min-
ister would have met with support among the colonists
themselves. The ideal republic has not been secured
anywhere on earth, least of all among people of the
Latin race. It is interesting to note that of all the
Spanish- American States, those which have shown the
largest amount of civic energy and stability have been
the ones farthest removed from the Equator, Chili and
the Argentine at the south, Mexico at the north. The
two most southerly ones have developed the largest
amount of political and religious liberahty, and have
in consequence attracted considerable immigration
other than Spanish.

Mexico, owing to her lack of good harbors and
the difficulty of penetrating to her centres of popula-
tion, developed politically and commercially more
slowly than the Argentine, in spite of the fact that her
territory touched that of the United States.

But as soon as regular railway service was estab-
lished betw^een Mexico City and the railway system
across the Rio Grande, Mexico progressed so rapidly as
to astonish even those who knew her best; and she
now moves forward in pleasant contrast to the manner
characteristic of her former self and her sister republics
of the past generation.

The Spanish colonies fought the mother country
long and furiously. Yet after the separation, and par-
ticularly when all who had taken personal part in the
quarrel had been laid to rest, old ties reasserted them-
selves. IMembers of the same family who had been on
different sides during the war, now began to interest
themselves in the descendants of common parents; the

[ 70 ]

TUMBLE OF SPAIN'S COLONIAL EMPIRE

Spanish colonist, proud of his Hneage and past glories,
yearned for a holiday in the Old World, and first
among the objects of interest was the soil that pro-
duced his ancestors.

The same feeling that impels the New Englander to
visit the birthplace of Shakespeare and gaze with awe
at the venerable parchment of the Magna Charta, in-
duces the Republican citizen of Buenos Ayres or Mex-
ico to visit the home of Cervantes and climb the lofty
flights of the Escurial.

The Spanish-American colonist is, after all, a Span-
iard, and let us not forget that, in the miany efforts
now making for realizing Pan-American ideals.

The books that feed his mind, the periodicals that
entertain his family, the news that is dearest to him,
the visits that he appreciates most — these are not
things of New York, London, or Hamburg, but of old
Spain. The ambitious diplomatist of Spanish America
knows the relative commercial importance of the dif-
ferent great powers, but the Court at which he appears
with greatest satisfaction to himself (and his wife) is
the Court of Madrid.

We in America of the north are apt to think that the
Spanish-American holds us in affection — is in some
mysterious way a part of our big western hemisphere
family life. That is true to a very limited extent — an
extent vastly more limited than many of our statesmen
are willing to admit. The Spanish-American is not un-
willing to recognize that in times past American po-
litical expediency made it advisable that Sjiain slunild
lose her colonies — just as in 1777 France found it to
her interest to take sides with Cleorge Washington

I 71 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

against George III. We were grateful to France then,
and we still demonstrate effusively when reference is
made to Lafayette at a Fourth of July banquet. But
sentiment of this kind did not prevent the United
States and France from being at war during the life of
Washington — nor did it prevent Napoleon III. from
seeking to destroy the American Union during our
Civil War.

During the last war (1898) the sentiment through-
out the Spanish-American republics was emphatically
opposed to the United States, and in favor of the
mother country. This sentiment was just as pro-
nounced in Montevideo or Santiago, as in Paris, Rome,
or Barcelona. Indeed the whole Latin world was ap-
parently at one on this subject, for reasons far removed
from mere commercial considerations.

Had Spain shown the capacity to carry on the war,
there is reason to think that she would have found in
her former colonies abundance of volunteers who would
have taken up arms against the Yankee with enthu-
siasm. For Spain is, after all, the mother, and her
faults have been largely forgiven.

[ 72 ]

LATTER-DAY CUBA

"We must prove that we are worthy of our country by showing
others that we know how to defend it. If we show that we are
unworthy of such a trust, then we shall go under^ — Letter of
Blucher to the King of Prussia, October 8, 1809.

Indifference to Emancipation at the Beginning of the Century —
Prosperity Under Slavery — Influence of the United States

IT has caused some surprise that when, in the early
part of the nineteenth century, all the rest of
Spain's important colonies declared themselves in-
dependent, Cuba and Manila and Porto Rico remained
loyal, or at least indifferent. The Philippines were geo-
graphically so much isolated that the movements of
Europe were scarcely felt; the domination of the
Church was all but complete, and the man for the hour
was not there. Cuba, on the other hand, was nearest
to Spain on the direct line of communication between
the mother country and her rebellious provinces; the
shores of the United States were barely a hundred miles
from Havana, and American public sentiment was no
less friendly to Cuban independence than was that of
Mexico or the Argentine. If ever a people could have
been described as ripe for revolution, that people in-
habited the island of C iiba at the beginning of the
nineteenth century.

But the very proxiniily of the United States proved
I 73 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

to be the main reason for Cuba's satisfaction in the ex-
isting state of things. Her first period of genuine pros-
perity began with the war between England and her
American colonies (1776- 1783), and the wars which
followed (1793-1815) raised the Queen of the Antilles
to a still greater height of prosperity. The shipping
which at the beginning of the eighteenth century came
to Havana to be counted by dozens, during the Na-
poleonic wars came by hundreds. The neutral flag of
the United States distributed Cuban sugar throughout
the world; plantations increased, slaves increased,
population increased, contentment was universal, ow-
ing to the helplessness of the mother country and the
consequent impunity with which contraband trade was
carried on. Cuba, from having been the poorest of
Spain's possessions and a drag upon the treasury of
Mexico, had become in the first quarter of this cen-
tury an object of envy to her sister colonies, to say
nothing of European nations. So long as the mother
country did not interfere with slavery the planters of
Cuba cared little whether their ruler were viceroy or
president. Like their fellow-planters of South Caro-
lina or Louisiana, they placed at the head of their
political creed the proposition that slavery meant pros-
perity. When in 181 2 Spain passed some laws against
slavery in the colonies, Cuba treated them as a dead
letter. The first serious quarrel wath the mother coun-
try was in 181 7, in consequence of a treaty with Eng-
land which stipulated that slavery should be abolished
in 1 82 1. This nearly carried the Cubans to a revolu-
tion. The mother country, however, took off the edge
of her children's wrath by permitting them in the inter-

[ 74 ]

LATTER-DAY CUBA

val to purchase slaves wherever they chose. The result
was a still further increase of prosperity, more planta-
tions, more slaves, and continued good prices of sugar
and tobacco. Cuba had then half a million people,
200,000 of which were African slaves. .

It is possible that Cuba's reconciliation to the anti-
slavery edict sprang from her conviction that it would
not be seriously enforced — and this view proved cor-
rect. From 1776 to the close of the American Civil
War, it would seem as though providence intended to
repay Cuba for the hard times through which she had
passed in the preceding centuries. Events that were
calamities to other countries proved blessings to her.
The revolutions on the mainland caused numbers of
Spanish families to bring their wealth to Havana.

In 1819 the first vessel propelled by steam appeared
in her waters, and steam was introduced in the sugar-
mills. Cuba was now so rich that her treasury assisted
in defending Florida against the United States, to say
nothing of assisting the mother country against her
sister colonies. Even the abolition of slavery, which
England enforced in her own West Indian possessions,
piled still higher the wealth of this favored colony.
British planters became poorer from day to day; their
plantations went out of cultivation, or at least dimin-
ished seriously in value, and what the Englishman lost
the Cuban gained, because the Englishman abolished
slavery in fact, while Spain did so merely in name.
Cuba was never so prosperous as when, under practical
.slavery, she cultivalcd licr estates at the expense of
bankrupt Englishmen. In 1850 she had a population
of 1,000,000, of whom nearly 324,000 were slaves. The

[ 75']

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Government revenue was about $10,000,000, sixty-five
per cent, of which was from customs. This extraor-
dinary state of prosperity had been built up through a
strange succession of fortunate causes, largely assisted
by the impotence of the mother country to enforce
her harmful laws.

And when the slavery forces of the United States
had carried through successfully the annexation of the
great southwest territory (Texas, etc.) which they con-
fidently looked forward to as a future land of slavery,
they commenced an agitation for the annexation of
Cuba for practically the same reasons. In 1850 the
first of many filibustering expeditions started from our
shores for the purpose of raising an insurrection against
Spain. The leader was a cashiered Spanish of^cer
named Lopez, who landed at Cardenas on May 19,
1850, with four hundred men. That was about the
number that Jameson had when he reached Krugers-
dorp in 1896, and they met with a like fate, in so far
that each was unsuccessful. Lopez, however, tried it
again in the following year, was caught, and put to
death as a pirate. His crime was the same as that of
Dr. Jameson, and the punishment was anticipated.
But as half of England hailed the popular " Dr. Jim "
as a hero, so in America the press cried out for venge-
ance against Spain, and in New Orleans volunteers en-
rolled themselves for the conquest of Cuba.

Instead of taking this warning, however, and calling
the leading Cubans to a share in the government,
Spain sought to suppress every manifestation of dissat-
isfaction in the old vicious way. The then Captain-
General of Cuba had the courage to protest against

[ 76-]

LATTER-DAY CUBA

merely repressive measures, and he pointed out to
Madrid that certain reforms were essential to the con-
tinued prosperity of the island. The Madrid Govern-
ment expressed its thanks by dismissing him from
office.

So long as Spain was utterly helpless, Cuba pros-
pered. But in proportion as she regained strength to
enforce her ungenerous administration Cuban pros-
perity declined, until at the beginning of the American
Civil War even the planters pretty generally regretted
that they had not cast in their lot with their sister colo-
nies and profited by the Monroe Doctrine. In 1861
Spain attempted to annex San Domingo. After a war
which lasted as long as the slavery war in America, she
retired, defeated and bankrupt, and saddled Cuba not
merely with the cost of this enterprise, but also with
that of the wretched joint attempt with Napoleon III.
against Mexico. The result was that Cuba, instead of
being able to contribute 12,000,000 pesos (dollars) an-
nually to the mother country, could from this time on
barely meet her own obligations. Banditti made their
appearance on the highways, and plantations com-
menced to suffer under a taxation which they could
not bear. For a few years the island had profited
somewhat by the American Civil War, notably through
blockade running and the slave-trade, for during the
struggle many American planters, either anticipating
the ultimate triumph of the North or forced to raise
money, sold llicir slaves to dealers who smuggled them
over to Cuba. J 11 1863 no less than 4,300 blacks were
intercepted by the S|)anish authorities, but that did
not j)revent them from ulliiiialciv reaching their desti-

I 77 I '

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

nation along with the rest who had not been turned
back.

With the fall of the slave power in America Cuban
prosperity declined, for it went hand in hand with in-
creased exactions on the part of Spain, and increasing
contact with the United States. In 1868 Queen Isa-
bella was driven from the throne, Castelar became
President of the Spanish Republic, and Cubans awoke
at last to a strange picture of New Spain, wherein all
parts of the Spanish-speaking world enjoyed self-gov-
ernment, save only Cuba, Porto Rico, and the far-away
Philippines.

If anything could add to Cuban discontent at this
time it was the final abolition of slavery decreed by
the Spanish Republic. Cuba henceforth had as little
to hope from the democracy as from the aristocracy of
Old Spain. The war of independence, which had com-
menced in 1868, lasted for ten years, and completed the
estrangement of the two countries, though the Spanish
flag still waved on for twenty years longer. That Cuba
did not then achieve complete independence was
largely owing to the courage, honesty, and sagacity of
General Martinez Campos, who was not merely effi-
cient in the field, but maintained a character for keep-
ing the Government pledges which drew many to him
who would trust no one else. In 1876 Spain sent to
Cuba 145,000 soldiers, and Cuba's monthly deficit on
account of the war was about $200,000. She had to
borrow on a falling market, and financially went from
bad to worse. As the African negroes were emanci-
pated, she sought to draw coolies from China and India,
but with indifferent success. Plantations were cut up

[ 78 ]

LATTER-DAY CUBA

into smaller sections in the hope that free negroes
would work them, but the result was not encourag-
ing. The exports from the island did not increase, and
the disposition to become American became all but
universal. Havana was bankrupt, the island over-
loaded with debt, yet she was saddled with the cost of
all Spain's consular and diplomatic representation in
America. She had, besides, to pay large sums in postal
subsidy and support of steamship lines to Spain, and
also to pay the travelling expenses of Spanish officials.
It was small comfort for a Cuban to be told that he
enjoyed the privilege of any other Spaniard, that he
had a vote in the Cortes at Madrid, that Cuba was a
province of Spain and no longer a colony. All that was
on paper. There was no influence in the mother coun-
try strong enough or honest enough to battle success-
fully for justice to that island.

The Cuban, with his tale of misrule and his plea for
better government, found in New York and Boston
audiences ready to give him a hearing, to assist him
in securing justice. In Madrid the same man was
greeted with the shrugs of people who barely knew
Cuba by name; who had griefs of their own more than
enough, and who wondered why Cubans could not do
as they did, suffer and say nothing.

In the spring of 1898, between the blowing up of
the Maine and the declaration of war, 1 made a run
across Spain on a bicycle, starting at the northwestern
corner, passing through Madrid, and ending at the
coast near Valencia, and sn up lo Barcelona. 'IMiat
little trip explained many tilings to ine which hitherto
had Ijccn strange. When I k-ft New Wnk nothing

I 79 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

was talked of excepting the possibility of war — in Lon-
don attention was divided between the doings of Par-
liament and the impending war. On the continent of
Europe it was the daily theme of the metropolitan
papers. Everywhere in the world the subject was one
of popular interest, save only in the country most
immediately affected. The moment I entered Spain
I ceased to see newspapers; people ceased to
talk politics; all were serenely ignorant of matters
beyond the border, and, happily for me, indifferent
as well.

In certain commercial circles of Barcelona or Madrid
hatred of Americans was pronounced, but that was a
small affair and did not affect the broad mass of the
population who tilled the fields and drove their asses to
market loaded with wine and cheese and wood. No
one cared if I were American or Chinese or German.
I was a stranger, and that was enough for the average
courtly and hospitable Spaniard. If I mentioned a war
with America or Cuba it excited the same sort of an-
swer that might be expected from an English laborer
when asked about a military expedition on the African
West Coast or in the hills of India. The Spanish peas-
ant was told that war was necessary, that it carried
away his neighbors, his children perhaps, that they
went to the Philippines or to Cuba, or to some distant
city of the Peninsula where there was a strike or riot,
and sometimes they never came back. That is all the
Spanish peasant of to-day knows about it. America to
him is a vague conception of semi-civilized territory far
away, where people are always making trouble, and
where Spain has to send many troops in order to sup-

[ 80 ]

LATTER-DAY CUBA

press rebellion. The United States is merely one, more
or less, in that remote agglomeration!

In Barcelona I saw caricatures of Americans —
mainly depicted as swaggering hoodlums with filthy
habits and wholly incapable of fighting. They were
commonly referred to as swine who would run away
the moment they saw a Spanish soldier.

That was Spain on the eve of the war which was to
cost her the remains of her colonial empire, and a de-
feat on sea and land so complete as to suggest rather
the hand of God than of man.

This was the Spain that Cuba sought to move — to
which she pleaded so long — for which she suffered so
patiently. For many years Cuba loved the mother
country, and she did not take up arms until her best
men were convinced that from Spain nothing could
be hoped but further humiliation and further misery.

In one of the expeditions during the Spanish War
our party captured a Cuban suspected of fighting in
the Spanish ranks. He was in tatters and his alarm
was grotesque, for he anticipated hanging as the mild-
est lot that could befall him — according to what had
been told him by his officers.

Our men (of the First Infantry, regulars) at once
commenced to make a pet of him, to share their rations,
and to give him material for rei)airing his wardrobe.

SJKjrtly before reaching Key West 1 asked him how
he was getting on.

" f)h, Senor, 1 have one great sorrow!"

" What is that? " I asked, lioping I tnighl help him.
It grieves nie to Ihiiik lli.il you (Hd not make pris-
(jners the rest of my pooi- family."

I «i J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

And those words have been often in my thoughts
while studying the colonial history of Spain.

Contrast for a moment the attitude of a Canadian or
an Australian going to England with that of a Cuban
visiting Spain. The Cuban is familiar with the most
advanced machinery made in Massachusetts or Con-
necticut. He returns to a country where agriculture
is conducted on principles that have scarcely advanced
beyond what remained when the Moors were expelled
by Ferdinand and Isabella. Between Havana and New
York the Cuban has travelled by sea and land in
luxury, and with a speed that excites the admiration
of experienced travellers. He goes home to travel on
railways whose express trains do not go as fast as
the freight cars of America, and whose best accom-
modation does not equal what we regard as our most
inferior. In a country burdened with military and po-
lice expenditure, railway travel is so insecure that
even to-day each train leaving Madrid is placed under
military escort — a. precaution that is not considered
necessary in even the most remote parts of the United
States.

The Cuban on his way to Madrid by way of New
York makes the acquaintance of a public sentiment
that is alive to human rights, he reads newspapers
which, with all their faults, present the news of the
world with some degree of accuracy. In the United
States he finds an intelligent sympathy for his condi-
tion, and above all a promise of commercial prosperity
in case of close alliance.

Compared with what he has experienced in America,
Spain is a backward province — an illiterate community

[ 82 ]

LATTER-DAY CUBA

of priests, officials, and peasants, who but cumber a soil
that once was illustrious.

The Cuban cannot love the Yankee, nor can he at
present look up to Spain with respect. It is the duty
of Uncle Sam to give him a government which he
can at least respect, and which will, in time, develop
into complete home rule for the Pearl of the Antilles.

[ « ^ 1

VII

THE PHILIPPINES IN OUR TIME

''When a people has prosperit-^, education, moral sense, and civil
liberty, it will allow itself to be ruined rather than surrender
these. ^'' — Gneisenau, 1807, Pertz, I., 322.

Spanish and English Systems Compared — Influence of the Roman
Church — The Yankee in Manila

THROUGHOUT the nineteenth century
Spain's administration of the Philippines re-
mained practically what it had been in the
previous three centuries. The commerce of the Islands
improved, as did that of Cuba, not so much because
Spain herself had profited by experience, as that her
very impotence and corruption permitted the laws of
the mother country to be violated almost with im-
punity. The loss of her great South American Empire,
in the first quarter of the century, caused her to attach
considerable importance to the fragments that re-
mained, and her constant need of money inclined her to
forgive almost anything in a governor who could ease
the financial strain. Throughout this century the
Philippines were regarded as a colony from which for-
eign influence should be excluded, even Chinese. To-
bacco was treated as a Government monopoly, and the
natives were compelled not only to plant a given
amount, but to sell it to the Government at twenty

[ 84]

THE PHILIPPINES IN OUR TIME

per cent, below its market value. The Filipinos were
nominally free, but had to pay a heavy poll-tax, to sub-
mit to forced labor fifteen days in the year, and further
to aid the Government by paying a heavy tax upon
everything within reach, from a cock-fight to a mort-
gage. Yet with the best intentions in this direction
Spain could not, any more than China, exclude the in-
fluence exerted by the progress of British commerce
in the Far East. The Filipino, the Chinese, and the
Creole merchant saw trade spring up wherever a Brit-
ish Governor made his residence, and only the Spanish
priest and official desired to check this influence.
Within this century Singapore and Hong-Kong be-
came neighbors to Manila, and each of these ports was
soon swarming with busy merchantmen — achieving
more in ten years than three centuries of Spanish rule.
Hong-Kong was originally regarded by the British
Government as fit only to throw away. Unlike the
Philippines, she was saved to the Crown not by the
religious fanaticism of a missionary priest, but by a
commercial instinct strong in British public sentiment.
The United States did not dream of ultra-marine ex-
pansion in 1 84 1, but her trade with China and the
Philippines bore favorable comparison with that of
England. Her tea-clippers raised the credit of the
Stars and Stripes throughout the eastern world. Be-
fore the Civil War and before protectionism had laid
its withering hand upon American shipi)ing, the skip-
pers of Salem and New York commanded sliips that
were better built and bctlcr manned than those of any
otlicr coniilry; and vvlial is more to the point, they
c.'inifd liaiidsonu- prolils fdi- those who vcnltu'cd their

I «5 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

money. American merchants worked hand in hand
with those of England in building up Anglo-Saxon
prestige from Tokio to Calcutta; and in the days
when I first visited those waters (1876) no commer-
cial house enjoyed greater credit in China and Manila
than Russell & Co.

At the same time the administration of Manila was
a by-word for inefficiency and corruption; if it had a
rival in this respect it was the Portuguese Macao. And
yet the Spaniard might with some plausibility reply to
such a charge by pleading bad government at home —
that Spain gives her colonies the best administration
that can be evolved at Madrid. This absolves her at
home, but does not satisfy those who suffer from her
colonial rule. If there is a general law to be drawn
from the study of universal history, it is that sooner
or later the land falls to him who can best make use
of it. In the struggle for the good things of this world
the strong have been successful, because strength gen-
erally goes with discipline, moderation, and certain
rough manly virtues. The strongest man cannot long
remain so if he indulges in debilitating practices; if
he fails to control his temper and other nervous forces.
It is so with an army, and, above all, with a nation.

The Spain that conquered the Western Hemisphere
was a nation bred up to the exercise of public liberty.
The Spain that drove out the Moors had been reared
in a political atmosphere where the ruler governed not
by divine right alone, but by consent of the governed.
In tracing the progress of Europe through the dazzling
reigns of such despots as Charles V. and Louis XIV.,
and through the French Revolution, to these days of

[ 86 ]

THE PHILIPPINES IN OUR TIME

newspapers and stump speeches, we must not imagine
that all this is merely evolution from absolutism to pop-
ular self-government. On the contrary, the glories of
these monarchs rested on the ruins of local liberties
which they had ruthlessly trampled underfoot. It was
the generation reared in liberty that fought the battles
of despotism under the name of rehgion. The Span-
ish warriors who dared every danger of the western
world went forth in the name of the cross, little dream-
ing that the Church whose symbol they bore aloft was
helping to forge the chains of their subsequent slavery.
The money that flowed from the new colonies made
the Spanish monarchy of Charles V. and Philip II.
brilliant in the pages of history, but the result was at
the expense of Spanish liberty. All the gorgeousness
of the Escurial could not atone for the suppression of
the Spaniard's ancient rights to vote supplies and con-
trol expenditure.

The Church did heroic service in stimulating war-
like energy and administering colonies of Indians, but
in the long run it has shown itself unequal to the task
it undertook with so much energy four hundred years
ago.

There was a time when the England of Queen Eliza-
beth offered a certain rough analogy to the Spain of
Philip II. Elizabeth committed acts so arbitrary as to
satisfy the most loyal .supporter of absolutism; she
sent eminent people to the block or to the rack with
no more let or hindrance than a Grand Inqtii.sitor.
Outwardly she appeared to be tyranny personified, and
her people apparently submitled with the acfiuicscencc
of servility. In Spain, on (he olher hand, (he old forms

I «7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

survived, and the monarch moved in a cloud of priests
and lawyers. Compared to the capricious and passion-
ate Elizabeth, Phihp II. exhibited the outward appear-
ance of a monarch heavily hedged about by limitations,
religious and legal, constitutional and local. But here
these analogies end. The power of Philip was military,
founded upon a large standing army and the strongest
navy of his time. In addition to having the Church as
his ally, he was in a position to enforce obedience to
his will by military force alone, if necessary. At one
time it seemed as though his mailed fist could reach
to any corner of Europe to crush a heretic or a rival
monarch.

Queen Elizabeth, on the other hand, had not a sin-
gle regiment or naval squadron on which she could
rely to carry out an act which her people might deem
unjust. When the Spanish Armada threatened Eng-
land, her queen could do no more than invite the co-
operation of her yeomen and sailors in saving her
throne from destruction. Tyrants cannot count upon
enthusiastic answers to such invitations. The tyranny
of Elizabeth was not the tyranny of Philip. Elizabeth
committed occasional acts of tyranny in a long reign
characterized by shrewd regard for English liberty and
constitutional law. Philip II. permitted an occasional
liberal action in a reign of monotonous despotism and
fanatical cruelty. When Elizabeth went forth as queen
the people hailed her with enthusiasm and cheerfully
subscribed handsomely for her enterprises. The Span-
ish monarch died without knowing that his people
could laugh or dance. They obeyed, and he asked no
more.

I 88]

THE PHILIPPINES IN OUR TIME

Spanish rule has lasted wonderfully long, with all its
abuses. In the Philippines it has been almost exclu-
sively Church rule, and from that rule we Americans
can learn much, for the Roman Catholic missionary
priest makes government the study of his life. He
does not go for a short term of years to enrich him-
self at the expense of the natives and then return to
enjoy his gains at home, but as a rule he spends the
best years of his life at his post; he at least under-
stands the temper of the people he is governing, and
can avoid the costly mistakes made by amateur ad-
ministrators.

If the English colonial ofificial is to-day a highly effi-
cient public servant, it is because he learns his duties,
and when he is appointed to a Government post he un-
derstands that he will secure promotion, will be well
paid, and, after a certain number of years, will retire
on a pension. In a general way the colonial official
resembles the Spanish priest of the Philippines, barring
certain obvious dififerences. The white official expects
to support a wife and family, the priest has not this
worry on his mind. The white official must think of
educating his children, of placing his sons in a career,
of getting husbands for his daughters. All these cares
the priest ignores.

l>ut the colonial official, more than the Government
servant in any other kind of work, must of necessity
be in a position to exercise daily, personal authority
and inllucnce over people who must obey; and yet
whose obedience is worth lii lie unless it is yielded will-
ingly, 'j'hc Spaniards have had four hundred years of
colonial experience, and yet lliey have failetl. Are we

r '^'^ I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

to conclude that we too must fail? England, in 1783,
was forced to retire from this country — yet her colonial
greatness may be said to have commenced with that
notable year.

England has had plenty of colonial checks — she has
committed more blunders than any other nation could
have repaired and still survive. She has had formid-
able insurrections to suppress; her colonial fighting
has been almost interminable. Spain, on the other
hand, has enjoyed comparative quiet in her colonies for
nearly three centuries. If ever a nation had a free
field for colonization it was Spain in her early days:
and she has failed hopelessly.

Did she fail because of the Church, or in spite of the
Church? That question will never be decided. The
bulk of evidence would point to the Church as the
agency that held the natives loyal to the civil adminis-
tration long after the home Government had ceased
to be formidable. It is noteworthy that the priests of
the Philippines have occupied the isolated stations of
that country successfully, and have done so without
any great show of military force. The whole internal
administration of the colony has been practically
guided by priests, and while many abuses are laid to
their door, the remedy lies not in immediately abolish-
ing the priesthood, but in gradually reforming abuses
and building up a colonial civil service that shall do
all that the priests have done, and do it better.

If the priests are bad in the Philippines, it is a sign
that the Government at home has been bad. No one
has aught but praise for the Roman Catholic mission-
aries in China, notably the Jesuits near Shanghai.

[ 90 ]

THE PHILIPPINES IN OUR TIME

Why should priests of the same Church be tyrants at
Manila and angels of mercy at Hong-Kong?

It is of prime importance that at the beginning of
our colonial career we impress the Filipinos with the
superiority of our civilization to that of Spain. Our
ofificials and soldiers should not merely be more honest,
more courageous, they should also appear to the na-
tives as in every way better worth copying. The
American official should speak Spanish, and at least
one or more of the native languages.

During the war the soldiers of the United States
were so shabbily dressed, that, in general, they suffered
by comparison with the 13,000 Spanish prisoners who
strolled about the streets of Manila. The natives and
others who desired to assist our Government in admin-
istering the country, were not favorably impressed by
American official dignity. Our troops were mainly
volunteers, and while most of them had fought bravely,
the bulk of the officers were men who owed their posi-
tions to political influence, and were not fitted to oc-
cupy administrative posts, least of all in a new colony.
Many of them were ignorant of military practice and
neglected their men — consequently discipline was lax.
The American volunteers whom I saw about Manila
resembled anything rather than the warriors of a great
nation — and the fault was not theirs, but that of an
inefficient military administration at Washington.

The natural thing for an honest government to have
done was to have railed in the assistance of Americans
wlio lirul livcfl in the Philippines; if that were impos-
sible, then to have called in the aid of such as were at
least familiar with (hat part of the world in general.

I ')^ I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

In 1898 I could find but a single American consul
who had been a year in the Far East, and not one who
knew any language but English. The men who offi-
cially represented us in Chinese waters at the outbreak
of the Spanish War, were not only of no official value,
they were in most instances disgraceful to the com-
munity that sent them forth. Notable exceptions,
such as John Fowler at Cheefoo, do but emphasize this
national scandal.

At the very outset, therefore, we impressed the Fili-
pinos with the worst rather than the best features of
our civilization. To them our army was a mob of
very brave and very shabby men; our officials were
coarse politicians who could drink much whiskey and
knew nothing of the country or its language. The
result is what might have been anticipated.

The Filipino, of all the natives of the Far East, has
a character which endears him to me. He has in
his blood a suggestion of the chivalrous Japanese;
the dignity and hospitality of the unspoiled Spaniard;
the ferocity of the Malay and the secretiveness of the
Chinaman. In America we have been pleased to cari-
cature him as a man half negro, half monkey. That
is far from the truth. Filpinos are highly intelligent
creatures, and our fault has been to suppose that we
can rule such people by force alone. Other nations
have failed at this game, and it is for us to profit by
their example.

[92]

VIII

THE NEGRO AS AN ELEMENT IN COLONIAL
EXPANSION

♦* It is the same all over Hayti . . . all that White en-
ergy, industry, and intelligence once initiated and carried on has,
since the disappearance of the White man, and the ascendancy of the
Black, practically dropped out of being. ' ' — H e^keth Prichard,
September, 1900. The Geographical Journal.

The Negro in America — South Africa — West Indies — As a Soldier
— Equality with Whites

LET us speak of the negro with some measure
of frankness. Forty years ago we no more
thought of questioning the wickedness of slav-
ery than the virtue of Christianity — or Republicanism.
People were either slave-holders or abolitionists; not
necessarily from knowledge, but from a conviction akin
to that which induces members of one religious sect
to suffer death rather than surrender an article of faith
about which all are equally ignorant. In the seven-
teenth century half of the white race fought the other
half over the interpretation of a few mystical words in
the Bible, and from i860 to 1865, one-half of the
clergymen of the United States denounced the other
half for their views regarding the capacity of the negro
for liberty, if not self-government. That (|uestion was
settled not by an appeal to the jndgmeni of mni loni
pctent to express an opinion, but by a long war which

I <M I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

ended in the victory of the side that had most men
and money. The American Civil War determined that
negroes should not be held as slaves in the United
States, but otherwise it left the black problem unsolved.

Among the many causes uniting in the North to
suppress slavery in the South the moral one no doubt
predominated. The impassioned oratory of such
courageous humanitarians as Henry Ward Beecher
found an answering voice throughout the more north-
ern States where the white man respected labor, and
believed that the Declaration of Independence applied
to every human creature without distinction of race.

Yet the black man has no greater enemy than the

/ enthusiastic white philanthropist, who has absorbed his

ethnological knowledge from the pages of " Uncle

Tom's Cabin," and who ends by victimizing the African

whom he desires to benefit.* From the day when Co-

* Negroes were the object of mob violence on the streets of New
York in the summer of 1900. The Rev. William Brooks, the colored
pastor of St. Mark's Methodist Episcopal Church, in West Fifty-third
street, preached a sermon before a large congregation on "The Story of
the New York Riot." During the sermon the feelings of the congrega-
tion were at fever heat, and, despite the pastor's frequent admonitions to
be calm, his hearers twice interrupted the sermon with vigorous applause.
He said :

" I have been visiting the riot victims and making an investigation. I
have a book of facts. What I say here to-night may send me before the
courts, possibly to jail. In making the following charges against the
police, I invite investigation : —

" Innocent men were cruelly assaulted.

" The clubbing in nearly every case was done by the police.

"We have not found a single ' tough ' character among the victims
maltreated, but honest, hard-working persons.

" Respectable and helpless colored women who appealed to the police
for protection were cursed and threatened for their petition.

" Men and women prisoners were beaten by the police while getting
in and out of the patrol, and while on the way to the police stations.

" Men were beaten in the station-houses.

" Men and women were taken from their beds in a nude condition by
the police."

[94]

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

lumbus brought the first African as a slave to the West
Indies, down to this year, 1900, when the lynching and
intimidation of negroes forms a familiar item in our
newspapers, the negro has been studied from two ex-
treme points of view, that of the professional philan-
thropist at home, and that of the practical planter " on
the spot." The liberation of African slaves not only
in the United States, but by England and Spain, in their
respective colonies, was effected mainly by the priest-
hood, who regarded slavery as a sin in the eyes of God.
Their position in the state made their opinion final on
the subject of what was the view of the Almighty on
this subject, and their arguments were irresistible, be-
cause they could be neither proved nor disproved.
The Church view in old Spain was not far different
from that entertained by the home churches to-day in
England and our Northern States, that the black is
inferior only so long as he remains a heathen. When,
however, he assents to missionary persuasion, he is
transformed not merely into a soul precious to the Al-
mighty, but into a political creature fit to vote by the
side of the white man.

The Boer of South Africa, who knows the negro
better than most of us, who is not only a devout Bible
Christian, but an ardent lover of liberty, has never ad-
mitted into his political creed the proposition that all
men are, ever have been, or ever can be, ecjual. The
Boer has fought his way through Africa when the odds
were ten to one in favor of the Kaffir; he has experi-
enced every form of native treachery, cowardice, and
cruelty; he has founded prosperous farms and villages
in a country once devastated by blood-thirsty chiefs,

I ').S I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

and has converted black savages into domestic ser-
vants.

On the occasion of my visit to South Africa imme-
diately after the Jameson Raid (1896), I found a pretty
general condemnation of missionaries among English
as well as Boer Afrikanders, on political rather than re-
ligious grounds. The white settlers of all nationalities
regarded it as injudicious that the Christian religion
should be perpetually dangled before the eyes of the
black native as a prize by means of which he was to
become, in some mysterious way, the equal of the white
man. Missionary teaching was far from inoculating
the KafHr with the meekness of Our Saviour; on the
contrary, employers of labor regarded the raw savage
as a better man for their purposes than the one who
had learned just enough of our reHgion to understand
the Declaration of Independence.

No nation has expended more energy and money in
effects to elevate the negro than the United States.
Perhaps it would be more just to speak of the Anglo-
Saxon nation in one breath, for the moral sentiment
on this subject is not very different, whether we refer
to London or New York, Chicago or Manchester.*
The same England that carried the first cargo of slaves
to Virginia was the first nation to abolish slavery in
her own colonies. In America, the churches of the
North, with the assistance of rich philanthropists, have
founded schools for negroes, and every college of the

* In ^^33 England voted ;^20, 000,000 to indemnify slave-owners.
The slave-trade had been abolished by England in 1807, by the United
States in 1808.^ In the great Civil War General Sherman claimed to have
destroyed in his raids more property than was represented by the whole
slave indemnity voted by England in 1833.

[ 96 ] '

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

country practically opens its doors to the African race.
Even West Point must give an officer's commission to
the black boy who passes her examinations. The first
negro who graduated at West Point was subsequently
expelled from the army for stealing money of the sol-
diers. One or two have graduated since, but their
career of usefulness is circumscribed, not because the
Government desires to discourage them, but for the
more potent reason that no soldier will follow them
into battle, or treat them as superiors. In no part of
the world where the negro has been colonized, does he
show so high a degree of domesticity and capacity for
civilization as in the United States, where for three
hundred years he has been in daily contact with a high
type of white manhood. From the very outset he
adopted the white man's dress, language, and religion.
So long as the white man asserted his ascendancy,
lived on his plantation, and looked after his negroes,
they gave him not merely their labor, but the tribute
of a loyalty touching in its childish completeness. The
negro adopted not merely the name of his master, but
assumed among his fellows the relative rank which
that master held among neighboring planters. Tlio
keynote to the negro's character is his inherited tribal
instinct. lie does not care for political institutions in
general — his whole being yearns for a chief, a leader, a
master. It was my fortune shortly after the Civil War
to visit some relatives who ow irmI large plantations in
Maryland. As I had been brought up in New I'.ng-
land, I assumed, of conrsc. that when the slaves were
cmancipalcil llic\ would all |iroiii|itl\' run a\va\' to llic
North, or, il llicy standi, wciild b.iiid toiM'tluT in iios-

1 "7 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

tile league against their old masters. But my young
preconceptions were violently jarred when in this
northernmost of the slave States I discovered that the
negroes not only had not run away, but, on the con-
trary, did not appreciate the political rights that had
been so suddenly thrust upon them.

When news of President Lincoln's proclamation
arrived, my kinsman, v^'ho was an arch " rebel," went
out to his negro cabins and announced the fact to his
blacks. " Now, boys — you're all free — go along — I
don't want you any more — get out! "

But they laughed in his face — they knew him for a
man of wit and humor. They thought this another
of his jokes.

Not only did they not leave, but to this day they or
their descendants are on the place, and cannot yet
understand why so much blood and treasure should
have been wasted down South to upset things that
needed only a little modifying to make them satisfac-
tory.

What I found among the plantations of Maryland,
I also found further south in every State from Virginia
to Texas — the same black man holding for his master
the same feudal feeling that characterizes the Kaffir of
South Africa.

This feeling makes the negro one of the best of sol-
diers, at least in the opinion of his white officers. Dur-
ing the Spanish War there was but one voice in the
matter, the voice of praise for the black man as a sol-
dier in the ranks. He needs the constant example and
leadership of the white officer, but under him he will
do anything that can be reasonably demanded. In

[ 98]

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

the butchery that marked the progress up San Juan
Hill the negro regiments under West Point captains
showed steadiness and courage. Since that war the
papers have been so busy with the praises of " polit-
ical " war heroes, that the Regulars have been ignored.
Indeed, though the war is now two years ended, I can
scarcely recall the mention of any West Point gradu-
ates — they are buried under a mass of politicians and
newspaper correspondents.

The negro makes a good soldier because he possesses
the cardinal virtue of the private in the ranks — loyalty
to the person of his chief. The negro soldier cares not
a snap for the red tape of the War Office — the captain
is his code. If he does wrong, he would rather take
a flogging from his captain than have a court-martial
and be acquitted. When the captain is on furlough,
the negro company is Uke a family without a head. I
have a friend who left his black regiment in Texas and
came to New York on furlough to visit his family.
Not many days after his arrival, there appeared at his
door one of his troop, who announced that he had
come to stay, " He belonged to Massa John's troop! "

That was quite enough in his eyes — and that of the
family. This black trooper stayed there, made him-
self useful ill the kitchen, bragged in the servants' hall
about the bravery of his chief, and, when the captain's
leave was up, the black man also went away.

The moving forces of this world cannot be put into
the scales and weighed. Great wars have been waged
under the inspiration of emotions without any more
fdiiiKJation tliMii fairy stories. Loyalty, respect for
parents, patriotism, religion — these are the forces that

I ')') I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

move the world, not factory-wheels and banking con-
cerns. The negro is a mighty force, and he can be led
by a thread in the hands of the man that knows him.
To-day this force is wasted to a large extent; the
negro is thrown out into the street; his leaders have
abandoned him; he is in America exposed to the ca-
pricious discipline of the white mob.'''

What I have said of the negro as an American sol-
dier is no less true of him in the British army. In the
West Indies, British Guiana, and South Africa, I have
seen excellent negro troops, and the British officers in
command have spoken to me of their men with the
same affection as have West Pointers. It is under
discipline that the negro shows to the best advantage
— discipline of a great plantation, of a vast summer
hotel, of a railway sleeping-car service, but chief of
all, the army; for military discipline suits the negro to
an exceptional extent. He loves the pomp and cir-
cumstance of it; the solemn parade, the music, the
swagger, and the serving of a chief.

In South Africa black troops were not used to any
large extent by the British, unless for mounted police
work. But those that I did see in Natal and among
the Basuto, were on a par with the best of the United
States or the West Indies. The English officers spoke
of them in the same affectionate manner, and for the
same reasons.

While I was at Maseru polo was in progress, and,
as there happened to be vacancies among the white
officers, black troopers were called upon to fill their

* In 1899 there were eighty-four negro lynchings recorded. For
many years lynchings in the United States have averaged between one
and two hundred annually, the large majority being negroes.

[ 100 ]

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

places, that the play might not be spoiled. These were
men born in savagery, bred up to steal and murder —
who had never worn more dress than a snuff spoon
through the ear up to the time of England's taking
charge of them. And yet here they were in the rough
and tumble of a polo game, playing with their con-
querors as children with their parents, at least on the
field of sport.

The negroes of Basutoland felt proud when allowed
to play with the white chiefs. It was beautiful to watch
the glow of pride on the faces of these natives when
called upon in a manner so flattering to their
vanity.

In my journey through Basutoland the British Gov-
ernor gave me as guide, protector, interpreter, and
escort, a member of his military force, who wore the
British uniform and cocked his forage cap over his
ear in a manner quite as " knowing " as Tommy At-
kins in Hyde Park. We went to Taba Basio to see
Masupa, the son of Moshesh, who in his day was the
most powerful chief in South Africa.

Our escort was of the family of Moshesh and re-
ceived semi-royal honors from the natives whom we
met on the way. But the honors he paid to his own
native King were scant compared to those which he
delighted in offering to the white man. His black
majesty, King Masuj^a, was slightly drunk when I had
the honor of a presentation to him. He was sur-
rounded by his warriors, and talked very freely of the
pleasure he would have in fighting against the I'ocrs!
Cheap talk this! for tlic Boers had thrashed the Basuto
on many occasions, and all the power these blacks now
[ lo' J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

have is what is loaned to them by British prestige.
When Masupa was told that I wished to carry away
a picture of him, he leaped up, ran to his hut, and dis-
appeared. I thought this very strange. Perhaps he
was angry — perhaps he was preparing an ambush for
me! Thinking it well to be certain on such a point, I
followed and found him rummaging in a big chest
among a lot of cast-off clothing. There were coats
that had been discarded by ship's stewards, consuls, or
British generals; it mattered little to Masupa, so long
as some brass buttons or bits of gold lace were left.
His chiefs held up first one coat and then another.
Finally he settled upon one that might have been worn
by a Portuguese Admiral — the cloth could hardly be
seen for the amount of faded gold lace upon it. First,
however, he put on a shabby red flannel shirt to which
he sought to add a paper collar. The studs bothered
him very much — they were even more troublesome
to his suite. One chief after another tried his fingers
at these strange and elusive articles — but the result
was torture to the King. The room had only the light
from a small door, and was nearly dark. The small
space was crowded with very greasy, naked chiefs who
tried their hands and fingers ineffectually at getting
the collar properly adjusted to the neck of their King.
They pinched his skin until it bled. The chief never
flinched. His Royal honor was at stake. They tore
collar after collar, and the day was drawing to its
close. At last, after much grunting, royalty issued
from that dirty hovel — every inch a king, as African
kings go, dressed in the cast-off clothing of Europeans,
with a stovepipe hat on his head, and in his right hand
[ 102 ]

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

the emblem of his savagery, the Kaffir knob-kirrie or
war club.

That is an epitome of the African when left to his
own devices. There was the King, and at my side was
the black private in a British cavalry troop. That pri-
vate was the superior of his King in every essential.
Masupa is allowed to reign because for the moment
he has his uses!

And here we have a lesson in colonial administra-
tion. Basutoland, containing fighting negroes which
are acknowledged as the best in Africa — some 250,000
in number — is governed by a half dozen Englishmen
who have not even a body-guard of white troops to pro-
tect them in case of a riot.

This country is far away from railways and news-
papers; at the time of my visit there were no British
garrisons within hundreds of miles; the Governor and
his wife were completely isolated; yet they assured
me they felt themselves as secure, day and night, as
though in lodgings on Piccadilly.

The Basuto honor Sir Godfrey Lagden because in
their eyes he repjesents justice, courage, and the great
far-away white Queen whom their imagination endows
with supernatural powers. If a Basuto chief misbe-
haves, the while Governor has no need to bring in
white soldiers for the sake of punishing the offender.
It is enough for him to call a council of chiefs to lay
the matter before them. By tact he secures their sup-
port, and Ihcy help him to punish the malefactor in a
manner which I he nrilivcs themselves recognize as
suitable.

No one dreams, in Bnsnloland, of a general mas-
I '".. I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

sacre of whites by blacks — least of all of a massacre of
English. Nor have the American negroes shown a dis-
position, even in their days of slavery, to rise and
attack the whites. They have been often sorely pro-
voked, and now and then there has been rioting, but
in general, wherever negroes have shown hostility to
white man's rule it has sprung from good reasons —
usually cruelty linked with incapacity.

Another black king whom I had the pleasure of
knowing was Ja Ja, who had been transferred from the
African West Coast to St. Vincent in the West Indies
in punishment for some raiding he had done in his
native country. Ja Ja had his wife with him, and lived
in a very comfortable bungalow looking out over the
Caribbean Sea. He had a negro servant to wait on
him, and the British Government allowed him a hand-
some salary. He lived in comfort far surpassing that
of his royal cousin Masupa. Ja Ja told me his tale —
assured me of his innocence — and begged me to in-
tercede with the United States Government to have
him reinstated in Africa. His intellectual calibre was
that of the average sleeping-car porter, and it was hard
to determine which was the more grotesque, his play-
ing the king in Africa or his royal pretensions in St.
Vincent.

I cannot claim large acquaintance with African roy-
alty. Masupa and Ja Ja, and a few Swazi and Malo-
boks whom I met casually, close my list. These few
were all good specimens of physical manhood — the
best of the blacks. What can we, in all fairness, predi-
cate of a race among whom these are types of leader-
ship? We keep repeating to ourselves that the black
[ 104 ]

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

man is equal to the white — that he only lacks oppor-
tunity — that he has not yet had time to develop, etc.
But is it fair to ask, " How much time must we give
him? What opportunities does he yet lack? "

My experience is probably that of most Americans.
At the school where I fitted for college (the Academy
of Norwich, Conn.) there was a negro girl in the same
class. She dressed as well as the others, and received
the same attention from the teachers. I never heard
of any slight put upon her; on the contrary, she was
an object of great interest to all the town, for the pub-
lic sentiment of the place was strongly in favor of prov-
ing the superior capacity of the negro. At Yale Uni-
versity was also a negro student in my year, I could
discover no forces at work calculated to discourage
him from aspiring to the highest professional positions
at the bar or in literature, in the pulpit or any other
of the liberal walks of life. On the contrary, if a negro
happened to rise a small bit above the common level,
there was a disposition to make much of him, to show
him ofT as proof of what the race could do.

We have a knowledge of the African as far back
as we have a knowledge of any human race, and from
the earliest historical times to this day, from Herodotus
to Uncle Remus, wc find the same helpless darky — the
delight of children, inconsequent, shiftless, melodious,
loyal, fond of color, delighting in sunshine, and shy of
consecutive labor.

N(jrtlicrn educators who liave lionostly striven to
sec the best of the negro, and professors at colleges, in-
cluding West I'oint, have assured nie that the capacity
of the negro f(jr intenectiial work is very liniiteil; that
I '<'5 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

they proceed rapidly in the early stages, when memory,
or rather mimicry, counts for much. They frequently
surpass white children of the same age in languages.
But soon they commence to hesitate in their progress;
their minds become clouded; mathematical reasoning
stops them; the white children then gain rapidly, and,
by the age of seventeen, the negro is left hopelessly
behind.

No one doubts that negroes can make a passable
show as preachers, law^yers, doctors, editors, poets, and
such. Judging by the feeble showing of some of our
white acquaintances in these professions, we almost feel
inclined to reach a helping hand to the arboreal por-
tion of the animal kingdom. But when the black man
has done his best in the intellectual walks of life, he has
after all only reached the level of an inferior white man.

Darwinism is the fashion of the day, but it does not
show us that in the last 10,000 years the black man
or the white has changed one iota of his physical or
intellectual capacity. Nations have come fonvard;
others have declined, according to laws connected
with morals and political economy; but the highest
type of our day, and the highest type of any previous
generation, do not differ sufficiently for us to draw the
conclusion that mankind has varied more than is in-
volved in one man having the use of a telephone and
a hundred-ton gun, against the other who had but a
javelin and a canoe paddle. This view may be wrong,
but it is at least founded on better legal evidence than
the one that accuses my ancestor of being an ape.

Spain has solved much of her negro question by in-
termarriage with Africans. The Frenchman in Mar-
[ 106 ]

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

tinique and Guadeltipe has also produced a bountiful
bastard breed. The Anglo-Saxon and the Boer of
South Africa are the only peoples that have kept their
blood untainted — and this is one secret of their power
over native races.

In Cuba we have accepted responsibility for more
negroes, in addition to the ten million or so in our own
country, and the world is interested to see with what
success we shall meet this new burden.

Our first duty is to recognize the truth, that the
negro is not the equal of the white man.

Our former slave States have been compelled by
military force to subscribe to a monstrous lie as the
price of political existence; and the result has been
that in more than one of our black States the law is
nullified, and young men are demoralized by seeing
the law daily set aside by respectable white people.
Such action is full of danger for the future. It needs
scant knowledge to point out that the generation
which treats with contempt one law, may, in the next
generation, be satisfied with no law at all. A republic
that has not respect for the law is in danger; for there
is nothing between us and the mob if we have shaken
the general confidence in legal remedies.

It is therefore our duty to revise the laws which de-
termine the present status of the negro. This coun-
try was founded as a white man's country — not merely
Illinois and New York, but Louisiana and Missouri as
well. It is our duly to regard the negro not merely
from the stand-jxjint of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," but frcnn
a broad study of liiin in the past four hinidrcd years —
in Africa, in llic VVesI liidics. and in the United Stales.
I '"7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

We need legislation that will obviate much of the
brutality and the lynching that now disgrace certain
sections of our country. We have not been successful
in the governing of inferior races, because we have
pretended that they were our equals. It will appear
from an impartial study of the subject that the negroes
of this country are, in part, reverting to their original
savage state — to devil worship. This has taken place
in Hayti, and other parts of the West Indies, and shows
us that the negro takes on the outward forms of the
white man's religion for so long as the influence of
the dominating race is upon him: but as soon as that
support is withdrawn he lapses back to the more con-
genial rites of his ancestors.

Livingstone, the great missionary, tells us that in
descending the Zambesi he came upon negro kraals
in regions that had been occupied by Portuguese mis-
sionaries two or three centuries previously. These
blacks could make the sign of the cross; and that was
all that remained of the mission work. With the de-
parture of the white priest, the white man's religion
had gone also, and to-day the Kaffirs of that neighbor-
hood are as savage in their rites as any others. At
least, so I have been assured by Dr. Carl Peters, who
was recently there.

Our law should recognize the negroes as minors, as
wards of the nation. No negro should be allowed to
mortgage his property or to contract debt beyond a
very small amount. Every opportunity should be
open to him for education, but the franchise should
not be granted to him, or anyone else, unless he can
prove a certain amount of property. Indeed it is hard
[ io8 ]

NEGRO AN ELEMENT IN EXPANSION

for me to understand the justice of permitting the man
who has nothing, to vote away the earnings of the
man who has. I should as soon invite the longshore-
men to elect our naval officers; or select the presidents
of our colleges from unsuccessful Freshmen. The
business of government is very largely that of raising
money by taxation and spending it for the good of the
community. The man who has earned money is more
likely to spend it wisely than the tramp, or the man
who does not care to work for the future.

Far be it from me to wish a re-establishment of
slavery to its former extent. But to-day the so-called
free African is no less a slave than he was fifty years
ago. He is a slave to the weaknesses that make him
at present the lowest thing in the scale of American
citizenship. He does not now fear the flogging of the
overseer, but he is the slave of the money-lender; the
slave of the corner grocer; the slave of the man who
advances him whiskey and gives him long credit. The
Shylock fraternity has swarmed down over the South
since the close of the Civil War and exploited the small
negro proprietor much as it has the peasantry of Rus-
sia, Roumania, and Hungary. Their methods are the
same the world over — they first open a shop where
they supply groceries and whiskey at lower rates than
any honest competitor can afford. Then they coax
the negroes to postpone the day of settlement, an easy
matter among a race of big children. Then they sell
them various other things — anything, in fact, from a
sham diamond ring to a mule — always assuring the
crcduknis blacks that they may pay at any time.

'Ihen conies a bad croj) — a sudden scarcity of money
I ""' 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

— a fall in values — a time when the negro is in particu-
lar distress. Then is the opportunity for which Shy-
lock has long been waiting. He presents his little bill!
The happy-go-lucky, shiftless black man, of course
cannot pay it, and finds himself facing bankruptcy.
Shylock draws a long face and says he must have
money at once — or be ruined; and the upshot is that
the negro deeds over all his little property to his friend
the money-lender and takes in return a mortgage, in
which he promises to pay annually a large amount of
money. In order to make that sure he promises his
usurious friend that he will never buy his supplies from
any other place, and, moreover, that all the cotton or
tobacco he may raise in the year shall be sent to him,
and only to him, to be sold on commission! Thus,
under legal forms, the money-lender of another race
"" enters, takes the place of the white planter, and puts
upon the black man a slavery as complete as was ever
devised in the days of " Uncle Tom's Cabin."

[ no ]

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

** Great Britain may therefore be, not inaptly, described as a
fortified outpost of the Anglo-Saxon Race, overlooking the Eastern
Continent and resting upon America.^'' — B rook; Adams, " Amer-
ica^ s Economic Supremacy,^'' igoo.

The German in Kiao Chow — German East Africa — West Indies
and United States

UP to the moment of writing, Germany has sent
out into the world more colonists than any-
other country save Great Britain. The notable
feature of this movement, however, is that the Ger-
man, as a colonist, prefers almost any flag to his own.
This is not because the German does not love his
Emperor, his language, his customs, and the thousand
little things that constitute the Fatherland. It is not
wholly true that he expatriates himself in order to es-
cape military service, for that service is not more un-
popular than most other personal taxes. But the Ger-
man loves liberty, and he realizes that, in colonies at
least, liberty is essential to progress. The German
Government hampers colonial enterprise by a mul-
tiplicity of of^cial limitations which weigh upon the
pioneer mcrcliani or planter, and that is why, in spite
of more than a million sfjuarc miles of colonial posses-

I 'M I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

sions, the children of the German Empire persist in
founding their new homes not in Kiao Chow or Kame-
roons, but in Australia, Argentine, Sumatra, Canada,
and Texas.

In 1898, on a North German Lloyd steamer bound
for the China seas, were seventeen German merchants.
Kiao Chow had then been one year under the German
flag, and German papers which reflect Government
opinion had laid so much stress upon the commercial
nature of that colony, that a stranger might have
thought it fair to assume that some, at least, of these
seventeen merchants were bound for this incipient
Hamburg of Shantung.

Two of them did go there to look about, but they
were so discouraged by the attitude of the of^cials that
they returned home. The rest found more comfort
under the Dutch or the British flag. A wealthy Ger-
man planter who had large plantations in Sumatra got
ofif at Singapore. I took him one day greatly to task
for not assisting in the development of German East
Africa instead of bringing his capital and intelligence
to the advancement of a rival colony. Said my German
friend:

" I did try to settle in German East Africa. But I
was not made welcome. I was choked by red tape.
I was not regarded as an intelligent member of the
community, but as one who was to be ordered about
by ofTficials — as though I were a peasant recruit.

" No! it is impossible yet to do anything in a Ger-
man colony — there is too much government. Instead
of getting the best man and paying him a high salary,
they pay a dozen men shabbily, and get but the com-
[ 112 ]

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

mon run of officials, and jou can't ask for anything
worse than that, at least in the tropics. Why! the
German Government does not pay the governor of a
colony as much as I pay an overseer! My manager
would not change places with the Governor of East
Africa ! "

This gentleman is well known in BerHn as a wealthy
and public-spirited Christian. He echoes the senti-
ments of many Germans competent to express an
opinion in such a matter.

Among my fellow-passengers were several going to
Hong-Kong. When I twitted one of them for not
going to Kiao Chow, I got practically the same answer.
Said one, " Why should I go to Kiao Chow? I have
more political and personal liberty in Hong-Kong
under the British flag than under my own. In Hong-
Kong I am somebody — in Kiao Chow I am but a
' common civilian.' In Hong-Kong German inter-
ests are respected, and Germans have a voice. In the
directory of the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank, Ger-
mans are represented as well as English. No, sir, I
love my country, but my patriotism is not strong
enough to carry me to Kiao Chow."

Of course, therefore, I visited Kiao Chow; for I
wished to see on the spot whether my German friends
of the North German Lloyd had been exaggerating.

My reception on the part of the Governor and offi-
cials generally was cordial, and everything was done
to make my stay agreeable. I lay stress upon this, for
one's views are frequently modified by personal trifles.

To be sure, being merely a civilian. I was not per-
mitted to enter the Govcrnoi's paiai'i' b\ [\\c main en-

I ".H

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

trance; but was, by the sentinel, sent around to the
side door. At the time I did not know that any in-
vidious distinction was being made, and so I had noth-
ing to worry about. The Governor invited me to his
table, and his official aides asked me to dine at their
mess. No governor was ever more painstaking or con-
scientious than this particular one. By this time he
has probably died of the fever or been replaced; for in
1898 the colony was so unhealthy that I could scarce
hear of anyone who had not suffered from dysentery or
malarial fever, or both. This governor was much wor-
ried over many things — the walls of his palace were
green with mould, the furniture which he had brought
out at great cost from Berlin was ungumming itself
under the influence of moisture; he was a physical
wreck by reason of the unsanitary state of his quarters,
and, while shivering with the damp, he. pictured in
glowing colors Kiao Chow as the great future sana-
torium of the Far East! I did not smile — it was too
pathetic!

Then he poured into my ears some of his cares of
state. I had hoped to hear him discourse on the prob-
lems arising from adapting European legal methods
to Chinese needs; possibly to frontier disputes, cus-
tom-house difficulties, military capacity of the Celes-
tials, a hundred problems of absorbing interest to one
in his position, fresh from the atmosphere of Berlin
or Kiel!

But no; his official mind was occupied by considera-
tion of how to punish a Chinese scullery-boy who had
inadvertently washed the dishes in the bath-tub. I
told the Governor that in China there were so many
[ 114 ]

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

worse ways of cleaning dishes that I would leave the
matter to a local court, and think no more about it.
He was shocked at my superficiality.

And just here let me point out the difference be-
tween the official and the normal mind.

To the official mind, perspective or relative im-
portance does not exist. For him every telegram
takes its turn, whether it refers to a ship sinking in
sight of port, or an accumulation of ashes in the dust-
bin. My friend, the Governor, worried more over that
scullery episode than Moltke over the capture of Louis
Napoleon.

On the occasion of my visit to Kiao Chow I found
five merchants as against 1,500 soldiers or officials.
This to me was depressing. I should have preferred
five soldiers and 1,500 colonists. But the Governor
thought otherwise. He could not understand what
these merchants meant by bothering him with ques-
tions about the place. He did not want them, they
only added to his worries. On the occasion of my
visit the Government had announced the first sale of
land to take place in a few days, and German merchants
in other ports of China had shown considerable patri-
otic desire to invest money for the benefit of the colony.
But few knew anything about the place. All were
curious to know if there were such a thing as a hotel,
whether they might sleep on board a shij) in port,
whether there would be tents procurable. Nothing
seemed to mc more reasonable than that. Throughout
the civilized world, when one iii.iii invites anolhor to
come to an inaccessible region and purchase from him
— vvlu't lu-r horses nr land the law of hospitnlily. if not

I "S 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

good policy, demands that no pains should be spared
in entertaining the prospective purchaser.

In Kiao Chow, however, this law was reversed, per-
haps in deference to Chinese topsy-turvy principles.
This governor resented what he was pleased to regard
as the insolence of German merchants, who, just think
of it ! had the audacity to imagine that he, an imperial
official, should waste his time in looking after such a
thing as commerce! Nobody wanted these merchants
any way; they only made trouble!

And this was the beginning of Germany's first
colony.

The best sites have been secured for barracks, the
officers have installed themselves as in a military can-
tonment, and if by chance a misguided merchant
should venture to settle in the place, he is regarded as
an intruder — is not even admitted as a member of the
social organizations patronized by the military aristoc-
racy.*

There was one exception at Kiao Chow. One mer-
chant did belong to the club — but, as has probably

♦From a letter dated Kiao Chow, October ii, 1898, I extract these
words, prefacing that the writer is eminently trustworthy :

"The German Government has purchased at a low rate all the land
in this vicinity, so that all buyers must secure their lots directly from the
government.

" The government therefore has a complete monopoly and withholds or
sells as may seem most advantageous.

" The first sale took place on Monday, October 3, 1898, as per pro-
gramme There were about forty bidders present, all of whom, with one
exception (a Swede), were Germans.

" Outside of this number were also eight or ten Chinese merchants.

" Blocks of land fronting the future Bund (water-front drive) and con-
taining about half an acre each, sold for from $3,000 to $6,000 (Mexican)
according to location.

" One large block of about if acres in extent was sold to a Chinese
merchant for $6,250 (Mexican)."

[ 116 ]

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

already been guessed, he was a money-lender, and was
elected by his creditors.

Much of the misery in Kiao Chow resulted from
home-sickness and inexperience, but still more from
inexplicable incapacity. For instance, the water was
unfit to drink — at least for Europeans. The men were
pretty generally suffering from diseases directly con-
nected with tainted water, and yet there were no dis-
tilling machines in operation — not even the warships
in the harbor were used for this humane purpose. It
was natural for me to feel that the German ships of
war which I had met in August of 1898 in Philippine
waters might have been better employed in distilling
water for the suffering soldiers at Kiao Chow. Such
work may not appear glorious — but it saves precious
lives.

Not more than one hundred miles away, at Wei-hai-
Wei, Admiral Seymour had also founded a colony of
Englishmen. It was but six months old — half as old
as the German — yet the English had wholesome water
to drink, and, consequently, there was no unusual
amount of disease. While the German Admiral was
fretting, the Englishman kept his men cheerful and
strong by encouraging outdoor sports.

Kiao Chow is a poor thing, as ports go. It will cost
millions of dollars before ships can anchor* with safety,
let alone discharge cargo in ordinary weather. It is
inferior to Wei-hai-Wei, and it is difficult to under-
stand what induced (Germany to take such a place for
such a ()urpose.

Diwing my visiljlicrc- was nol a single vessel in port
that was nol Ibcrc on ( io\ (•rnmcni account or under

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

annexed to that of the German Empire * — " leased,"
is the more polite term.

There have been people murdered in other countries
besides China — in the United States, for instance.
Would it seem right that a country should, because
one of her subjects had been murdered in Alaska,
bombard Washington or New York or New Orleans
without warning? Would not reparation have been
demanded in the first instance, and war declared after-
ward? The seizure of Kiao Chow took place in a time
of profound peace, under no adequate provocation.
It was an act of war, and, though China could not at
the time resent it by force of arms, we may rest assured
that it was an act which went far to rouse in her peo-
ple the resentment that in 1900 sustained the so-called
" Boxer " movement.

Germany sends forth her children by the hundreds
of thousands to strengthen the white man's dominion
over the earth, and the colonies which receive them
are grateful for this increase. But official Germany
calls them unpatriotic and preaches the duty of colon-

• The German Emperor will be blessed by generations unborn for
having made the first application of Henry George's theory regarding
land tenure. In Kiao Chow the Government has distinctly set its face
against speculation in land value. Whoever buys a parcel of land is
liable to have it repurchased by the Government at the end of a limited
term of years, and whatever increase in value it may have acquired is
looked upon as the property, not of the man who first purchased it, but
of the community through whose industry the unearned increment has
come into existence.

Australia has only partially recognized the justice of the Henry George
doctrine in this matter. The United States has as yet made no sign that
she means to apply it either in the Philippines or Cuba. At present,
therefore, the two most advanced colonies in the way of land legislation
are New Zealand and Kiao Chow, the one the most advanced of democ-
racies, ths other a mere military government.

[ 119 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

subsidy of the German Government. I saw an Ameri-
can four-masted schooner from Oregon bump her bot-
tom to pieces, because, in spite of her captain's repre-
sentations, she was assigned by the Governor's orders
to an unsafe anchorage. The approaches to Kiao
Chow were so badly charted that the captain of the
German mail steamer had to go a hundred miles out
of his course on the short run from Shanghai. Physical
defects can be readily repaired, money and energy can
build harbor-walls, sink artesian wells, and complete
charts. But officiahsm is the vice that to-day affects
the growth of Kiao Chow; the inability of the official
mind to perceive that a colony must, in order to pros-
per, be governed in the interest of the colonists, and
not merely of the officials.

The seizure of Kiao Chow, like that of South
America by Spain, was ostensibly from religious mo-
tives. Two Roman Catholics, missionaries, had been
murdered by a Chinese mob somewhere in the interior,
where missionaries are particularly requested not to
penetrate. The German Government did not wait un-
til an explanation or the usual reparation could be
offered, but immediately dispatched a squadron to take
possession of Kiao Chow. The Chinese commander
of the port, when he saw the squadron enter, thought
it had come on a friendly visit, and prepared to receive
the landing party with sweetmeats and other evidence
of kind intentions. But his friendly offices were not
accepted, the place was soon occupied by German
marines, the Chinese flag hauled down, the German
placed in its stead, the peaceful Chinese i)oi)ulati()M dis-
possessed of their anccslral homes, and the territory
1 iiS 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

izing only under the German flag! The German citi-
zen is called upon to pay heavy tribute for naval and
military expenditure, ostensibly to protect German
commerce and German colonies. But the practical
colonist smiles at these pretexts, they are mainly polit-
ical humbug. German commerce and German emi-
gration took very good care of itself before ever a
colony belonged to Germany. The industrious Ger-
man, like the Swede, the Norwegian, the Swiss, the
Italian, spreads himself over the face of the earth, with-
out a thought as to whether he has a big navy or army
at home. He emigrates to-day in order to better him-
self. If his country ofifers him a welcome he returns
to spend his fortune there; if not, he spends it in some
other place. The German who has accumulated a
fortune in Milwaukee or Melbourne will spend it in
Berlin or New York or London, according to his taste.
He will certainly not take his money to Berlin, if there
he is confronted with the same species of official and
military caste that excludes his fellow-merchants from
the club of Kiao Chow.

The history of German colonization is a short one —
a thing of yesterday. After the Franco-German War
the then Prime Minister, Bismarck, embarked upon a
series of domestic measures which in nearly every case
were either failures or at least diminished his prestige.
Socialism increased immensely under his ungenerous
administration, his quarrel with the Pope ended in
compromise, his persecution of the Poles made him no
friends even in Russia; with the persecution of Danes
he had but scant success. Finally, like many another
perplexed statesman, he took up foreign ventures, in

[ 120 ]

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

the hopes of drawing away the attention of his fellow-
countrymen from the faults he committed at home.

Colonial societies were formed, mainly in inland
towns. The official press persistently dwelt upon the
glorious future that might be expected if the hundreds
of thousands of Germans could be diverted to German
colonial soil. Finally, about 1884, the German flag
was hoisted over a large number of very hot sand
strips, and the German Empire entered upon its career
of alleged colonization.

In times past Germans have made colonial efiforts,
but they have all failed. Charles V. gave a trading
license for practically the whole of Venezuela (in 1528)
to a German Company, which promised at one time
to develop into a species of *' Chartered Company."
But the privilege was withdrawn in 1550, as the Ger-
mans had accomplished nothing to warrant a continu-
ance. The Great Elector of Brandenburg entertained
colonial schemes, and Germans under his auspices are
said to have founded trading stations in the West
Indies and on the West Coast of Africa. For the sake
of finding traces of this I'randenburg settlement, which
was upon the island of St. Thomas, 1 sailed entirely
around the island, but not only could find no trace of
it myself, but could find no one who had ever heard
of such a settlement. German colonization in America
has never partaken of llic pioneer character, like that
of the Boers in South Africa, or the Tjiglish in New
England. The niismlc of petty German princes drove
many families to this country as early as the eighteenth
century, l)ut in no rase did they do more than settle
among people who hnd alrcadv done the preliminary
I i^'i I

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

These emigrants have not been wholly lost to Ger-
many. On the contrary, they have carried with them
a love of the old Fatherland, much as that love has
been strained by harsh government. When they make
a fortune their thoughts turn naturally to Germany, to
the land of their ancestors — the home of their Schiller
and Goethe, their Bluecher and their Ernst Moritz
Arndt.

That to-day German trade is so great as to support
the two largest steamship lines in the world is owing
largely to the Germans that have settled at the ends
of those lines. All the million square miles of colonial
Germany are as nothing compared to any one of a
dozen American cities — not merely as regards trade,
but as regards Germans controlling that trade. Offi-
cial Germany desires to divert Germans from America,
where they are happy, and plant them in official colo-
nies, where they are sure to be wretched. There is
nothing new in this, but the time has gone by when
colonies can be planted in such a manner. The colony
that succeeds to-day is not the one in which are the
largest number of soldiers and officials, but the one
that gives the colonists the widest opportunities, not
merely for earning a living, but for living in liberty
while earning. The English colonies offer this attrac-
tion to the German; and the Yankee welcomes him
cordially. There is scarcely an American town in
which Germans do not figure among the leaders of
political, social, or commercial activity. At Yale, in
my day, I can recall few professors or tutors that
had not studied at a German University. German
thought, German industry — these have leavened
[ ^23 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

work of establishing order in a new land. We cannot
determine with exactitude the number of men who
deserted from the regiments sold to George III. by
German princes during the American War (1776-
1783). We know that King George was bound to
pay a given sum for all those that were killed, and it
was to the obvious advantage of the German princes
that as many as possible should remain in America.
Desertion from the British ranks was assisted in those
days by scattering leaflets, which informed the Ger-
man mercenaries that if they would leave the ranks
and throw in their lot with the colonists they should
receive land and be otherwise well treated. There is
good reason to suppose that many out of the 40,000
who came to this country as soldiers remained to be-
come American citizens.

The great European revolution of 1848 furnished
another contingent of emigrants to this country —
notable not merely for numbers, but for the high
average of education represented by the political refu-
gees. These, through their connection with the press
of Europe, were in a position to furnish accounts of
the United States which awakened a yet wider de-
sire to emigrate to the New World. The opening
of California with her wealth of precious metals, the
enormous expansion of new territory beyond the Mis-
sissippi, the opportunities of acquiring farms for the
asking — these causes, uniting with the establishment
of steam navigation on I he Atlantic and a daily cheap-
ening of the cost of transportation, created a stream
of ricrmnn cnn'gration which was pretty constant dur-
ing the second half of the nineteenth century.
[ 122 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

America; yet Germany reaps her reward as well,
though she seems unconscious of it. It is not a re-
ward in the shape of a German flag fiying over the
Capitol at Washington, or another slice of map painted
in German color. Her triumph is nobler than this.
Germany can rejoice in the thought that the thou-
sands whom she has driven beyond her borders for a
living have found under the American flag opportuni-
ties that were denied at home; her children have been
well looked after; they have been allowed to speak
their mother tongue and to practise religion after their
own fashion. They have secured the same rights as
the people among whom they have cast their lot.
While official Germany has persecuted Poles, Danes,
and Frenchmen for cultivating their own language, the
United States has done the reverse, and the result has
been that Germans find it agreeable to learn English as
quickly as possible.

When in 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers reached Massa-
chusetts, in a ship not bigger than a Gloucester fishing
schooner of to-day, they fell on their knees, thanked
God for their safety, and then set to work building —
first homes, then churches, then schools.

When I happened to be in Kiao Chow, not even the
soldiers had barracks fit to keep out the rain; two
buildings of mud fit for cow-stables represented the
hotel accommodation. There was no wharf for land-
ing general stores, no storehouses for the custom
house. There was no water fit to drink, and no means
of procuring any. Labor was almost impossible to
procure, even for the Government, and I found the
head of a great German manufacturing house painting
[ 124 ]

OFFICIAL GERMAN COLONIZATION

the shutters of his hut because he could find no one
to do the job for him.

Yet in such an hour official Germany was employ-
ing a long train of coolies for the purpose of erect-
ing — what do you suppose? A distilling plant? A
recreation ground for the men? A church?

None of these!

These precious coolies were employed in erecting a
monument to Admiral Diedrichs, who had seized the
place twelve months before !

[ 125 1

COLONIAL PORTUGAL IN OUR TIME

regarded as snares for the unwary. Buoys were some-
times placed correctly, sometimes not — and sometimes
they disappeared mysteriously. The commander of a
mail-steamer requires reasonable certainty in these
matters, and prefers many hours' delay rather than the
chance of going to pieces on an uncharted bank.
Shortly before my arrival, an American four-masted
sailing-ship had gone ashore in water marked abundant
by the symbols of Portuguese maritime administration.
The captain of that ship was on his first voyage to
Portuguese East Africa, or he would have known bet-
ter than to trust anything but his lead-line.

Merchants on shore told me of a Portuguese gov-
ernor who, in an outburst of ambition, induced his Gov-
ernment to furnish a light-ship that might simplify exit
and entrance during the night. In the course of time
this useful vessel arrived, and it was hailed by the trad-
ing community as the dawn of a new era, worthy of the
nation which had produced a Vasco da Gama.

The Governor not only recognized the value of a
light-ship at night, but utilized it also by day as well,
for cargo purposes. This craft — half lighter, half light-
ship — gave unbounded satisfaction to official Portugal.

Lighterage rates were high, and the Governor soon
had the satisfaction of learning that he had outdis-
tanced all other maritime countries by making his
light-house service not merely inexpensive, but actually
a source of profit. The day seemed to have dawned
when the Nore Light-ship would commence to earn
its living by taking bricks from Southend to the Med-
way, or the Sandy Hook light operate as an excursion
barge between Ccmey Island and Long Branch.
[ 127 ]

COLONIAL PORTUGAL IN OUR TIME

*• God si/ted a whole nation {^England) that he might send choice
grain into the wilderness. {New England, i620.y^ — William
Stoughton, Election Sermon, 1688.

Some Personal Notes on Delagoa Bay — Macao — The Moluccas —
The Portuguese Slave-trade and Missionary Enterprise

THE Portuguese have in Delagoa Bay the best
— I had almost said the only — first-class har-
bor between the Zambesi and Cape Town, It
is the nearest port for the Transvaal gold-fields, and,
under ordinary conditions, the visitor would be justi-
fied in expecting here a settlement rivalling Cape
Town in commercial activity. For more than four
centuries Portugal has enjoyed possession of these
coasts, and here, if anywhere, Providence seems to have
thrown together pretty much all the conditions of
colonial success — save the one without which no com-
munity can prosper, not even at Delagoa Bay — I mean
honest government.

On the occasion of my visit (1896) the approaches
to the harbor were so marked by the authorities, that
mariners who knew the place treated it as one where
charts ceased to have value. 'Hie signs which in other
ports help the navigalor lo his anchorage are here
[ 126 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Our thrifty Governor of Delagoa Bay, however, had
barely time to receive the thanks of his Government,
before a succession of wrecks off the port warned him
that his invention lacked one or two features to make
it complete. The beach combers and wrecking com-
panies had no fault to find, but the owners of ships
complained because the light-ship, when it finished its
work as a lighter, was wont to anchor in that part of
the bay which was most convenient for the next day's
job. The triumph of the Governor was complete so
long as the sun was shining, but when ships after dark
sailed in by the light of a jack o'lantern, the result was
more startling than satisfactory.

The law compelled me to land at the custom-house.
The same law had forbidden an enterprising Ameri-
can company from building a wharf at which ships
could have loaded and unloaded. To-day passengers
and goods are first dumped over the side in small boats,
then rowed ashore to the sandy beach, then once more
unloaded, then transported to the custom-house and
there inspected. Then they are sent off by rail, to es-
cape death and demurrage; for Delagoa means death
to all but those who thrive on swamp microbes.

On landing I found myself walking amidst what
seemed to be the ruins of some vast " department
store " of a " universal provider." A cyclone seemed
to have suddenly blown away roof, sides, and supports,
and spattered the sands of East Africa with samples of
nearly every commodity known to man or woman.

There were bags of rice, whose contents were min-
gling with the leakings of petroleum kegs; Waterbury
clocks, electrical machinery, ladies' bonnets, boots and
[ 128 ]

COLONIAL PORTUGAL IN OUR TIME

shoes, cigars, patent medicines — these and others too
many to mention were scattered about in most dis-
tracting profusion. Amidst this wreck of material
civilization there strolled listlessly many ginger-colored
manikins representing the Rule of Portugal at this
port. There were also big naked black porters of the
Zulu type, who made the Portuguese officials look
even smaller.

The ginger-colored officials and their black porters
could afford to smile at the commercial havoc round
about them. The one who did not smile, however, was
the white merchant seeking distractedly amidst the
sand-swept spaces of this so-called custom-house for
the different parts of a steam-engine, a hoisting gear,
or the contents of a new drug-store. The many Ht-
tle Portuguese officials were living mainly upon illegal
fees extracted from these wretched white merchants
of Johannesburg. The Transvaal Government was
also a good customer of the Delagoa Bay officials, who,
in consideration of money paid, connived at extensive
importation of Boer War material which was ambigu-
ously labelled: " Machinery " — and which made itself
felt in the winter of 1899- 1900.

During my stay, the Foreign Minister of the Trans-
vaal, Dr. Leyds, appeared mysteriously one evening
by train from Pretoria, pulled out at once to a German
man o' war which had arrived that morning by a curi-
ous coincidence, and the next morning early returned
to the Boer capital. No papers mentioned this strange
visit. There was merely an official paragraph in his
(jovcrnmenl organ slating that Dr. Lcyils had left
town for his hcallli!

I '-"J 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Yet Delagoa Bay is not by nature doomed to be a
white man's terror. To-day it is pestilential merely
because it is Portuguese. The port of Durban, which
the British once regarded as dangerous to health, to-
day is not merely a good all-round place of residence
for the white man, but is frequented as a health resort
by visitors from other parts of South Africa. Anglo-
Saxon enterprise has drained its swamps, built broad
macadamized roads, introduced a sewage system and
provided plenty of good drinking water. Durban by
nature is a much poorer port than Delagoa, but thanks
to good administration she has in forty years accom-
plished more than Portugal in four hundred.

It would be a blessing to every white man in South
Africa if to-day England would administer Delagoa
Bay in trust for the commerce of the world, as she
governs Hong-Kong and Singapore. The German
and Boer merchants yearn for this no less than the
American and the English, but official red tape and
national jealousies intervene.

In Delagoa Bay I found only a few houses fit for
residence, and they were, as might be expected, the
official residences of consuls or high Portuguese offi-
cials. The rest of the town was a shabby gathering,
measured even by the low standards of African coast
towns. I was shown an official map of the place which
depicted broad and extensive boulevards, public parks
with fountains, handsome embankments along the cool
river front, and public buildings on a scale to rival
those of Cape Town. This map was intended for Lis-
bon. and Lisbon only. In South Africa it was regarded
as a joke on the part of the Governor; for it reminded
[ 130 ]

COLONIAL PORTUGAL IN OUR TIME

one of the famous city of Eden described by Dickens
in " Martin Chuzzlewit."

Though this country is populated by an excellent
race of negroes, labor of any kind was difficult to ob-
tain because of the bad reputation of the Portuguese.
Every road leading to the town was infested by dram
shops; and beyond debauching them and taxing them,
I could discover no interest taken by the Government
in a race singularly helpless and remarkably amenable
to white man's influence.

The Roman Church did much to strengthen Por-
tugal in Africa. Her missionaries organized the na-
tives into missions and encouraged respect for Por-
tuguese law long after Portugal had ceased to show
herself capable of enforcing it. But as the Church sank
in public esteem in Europe, her powers diminished
in the colonies, and throughout the eighteenth century
one can mark a steady decline of clerical as well as
political influence on the part of Portugal.

The loss of all her missionary prestige has been at-
tributed by competent judges (notably by Theall) to
the fact that in Africa, at least, the Roman Church
admitted negroes to Holy Orders for the purpose of
sending them as missionaries to their fellow blacks.
The experiment was disastrous, for in the great major-
ity of cases the native proved incapable of resisting
the many temptations surrounding a celibate clothed
with the powers of priesthood.

As early as 1464 negroes were sold as slaves in Lis-
bon; and though at various times the Church and the
Covcrnnicnt have condoinned it in (he abstract, Por-
tugal has tolerated slavery in lier colonies, if not at
[ 131 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

home, from her earliest intercourse with the black man
to our day. And, unfortunately for that country, the
blood of her children has become so mingled with that
of natives that to-day the name Portuguese carries
with it no race distinction. Throughout the colonial
world, all who think themselves a peg above mere na-
tives and obviously cannot claim to be white, are en-
tered by courtesy as Portuguese.

Poor little Macao, at the very gates of Canton, was
the first European settlement in China — the port from
which started a glorious train of missionaries and am-
bassadors, who first opened the Chinese world to Eu-
ropean civilization; poor little Macao lives to-day by
nibbling the crumbs that fall from the tables of the
neighboring Englishman at Hong-Kong. Her streets
are deserted but for a few Chinamen, a few tourists, a
few officials, and a large number of mulatto-looking
nuns and priests who seem half alive. There are also
some little Portuguese soldiers who guard a little fort
and mount guard at the palace of a little governor, and
carry guns many sizes too big for them, and look alto-
gether barely equal to the Chinese coolies along the
water front — man for man. The commerce of the Port
has gone, driven away by bad government. It is Dela-
goa Bay all over again, in so far as in both places man
has done what he could to destroy what the Creator
had given him to cultivate.

During my visit to Macao (1898) there was momen-
tary prosperity, owing to the large number of priests
that had taken refuge there from the wrath of the
Filippinos. They created a boom in hair restorers as
well, for they intended to go back as soon as their ton-
[ 132 ]

COLONIAL PORTUGAL IN OUR TIME

sures should have ceased to betray them to the fol-
lowers of Aguinaldo.

As the traveller of to-day wanders about the little
peninsula of Macao and sees it garrisoned by a breed of
man compared with whom the Chinaman appears to
be a warrior, it is indeed hard to appreciate that so far
back as 1520 — one hundred years before the settle-
ment of New England — the name of Portugal was
mighty throughout the eastern world, from Cape of
Good Hope to India, and from India to the Spice Isl-
ands, as far as New Guinea.

The famous Spice Islands, lying between Singapore
and New Guinea, were particular objects of Portuguese
attention, not only because of the high price which
their products commanded throughout Europe, but
because of the opportunity for missionary enterprise.
It was to acquire these islands that Magellan, after
vainly importuning the Government of Lisbon, suc-
ceeded finally in persuading Spain to support him in
his enterprise. It was on this journey that he first
discovered the Southern Cape of South America, and,
though he lost his own life in the Philippines, some
of his men made the first circumnavigation of the
globe, with a cargo of spices vvhicli paid for the expe-
dition six times what it originally cost.

When I sailed (1876) through the famous islands
that inspired the journey of this great navigator, I
looked in vain for traces of Portuguese Christianity, or
even government. Among the Moluccas, naked sav-
ages armed with spears and poi.soned arrows swarmed
about our ship, offering us, as their most precious ar-
ticle of commerce, dozens of chocolate-colored babies.

f Kv^ I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Nothing is more pathetic under any circumstances
than a baby, but a canoe full of babies — far away from
land, offered for sale by savage brutes at prices vary-
ing from the price of a turkey to that of a pig — this
made a sad epitome of Portuguese Rule!

That was in the heart of the Portuguese Moluccas^
after four centuries of mission work. The natives with
whom I came in contact had in many instances been
wounded by poisoned arrows, for their bodies showed
the frightful marks left by the knife. They had cut
the mortifying flesh clean out as though it had been
the decayed part of an apple.

These islands are still a favorite resort of pirates, and
the ship I sailed on was prepared to fight if circum-
stances demanded. She mounted two pieces of artil-
lery, besides a full complement of rifles, pistols, and
cutlasses.

Now that the United States flag is at Manila, it may
reasonably be expected that a serious effort will be
made to establish commercial security throughout that
part of the world. Holland, it is true, has large inter-
ests in the neighborhood, notably Java, but she has
so far shown little inclination to become a water police-
man beyond her own immediate front door. We may
confidently look forward to the time in the near future
when the United States of Australia will not merely
fall heir to the colonial posts of Portugal in the Far
East, but exercise throughout the waters of the East
Indies a " Monroe Doctrine " analogous to that which
Uncle Sam maintains in the Caribbean Sea.

[ 134]

THE FIRST YEARS OF PORTUGUESE
GREATNESS

** Notre {^France) politique continentale, sous peine de ne nous
valoir que des de'boires, doit etre desormais essentiellement defensive,
C est en dehors de P Europe que nous pouvons satisfaire nos legitimes
instincts d'' expansions. Nous devons travailler a la fondation d'' un
grand Empire Africain, et d^ un moindre Asiatique.'*'' — Leroy
Beaulieu, " de la Colonization," ed. i89i,p. ix.

Early Explorer-s — Henry the Navigator — Albuquerque — Relations
With Africa and the Far East

THE early years of Portuguese exploration,
conquest, and missionary enterprise read al-
most like a fairy tale, so crowded are they with
dazzling feats performed by a handful of men against
what appear to be gigantic odds. What has become of
those heroes? The boundaries of Portugal are to-day
what they were then; the Church that inspired mis-
sionary zeal is, if possible, richer and more powerful
t(j-day than when St. Francis Xavier landed in Macao;
she yet holds vast unexplored territories keenly cov-
eted by other countries, yet from day to day her power
slips from her grasp like a sword from the hand of a
dying man.

Portugal, at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, in-
cluded the whole coast of Africa from Morocco around
f 135 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the Cape to the Red Sea; India from the mouth of the
Indus to that of the Ganges; the richest islands of the
Malay Archipelago, and a fortified station at the very
gates of Canton. This takes no note of Brazil, a vast
empire by itself. Looked at on the map, the colonial
power of Portugal seemed to embrace everything
worth having, excepting what Spain claimed in
America and the Philippines. She appeared to be a
power to whom could be compared only the England
of to-day, in the extent of her possessions and the en-
terprise of her people.

And it was by the son of an English woman that she
was thrust into the front rank of nations. Henry, the
Navigator, as this Portuguese prince was called, was
born in 1394. His mother was Philippa, sister of the
English Henry IV. He grew up in the midst of a
generation which was just resting from more than a
century of warfare against the Moors, a struggle that
enlisted the savagery of religious zeal no less than
the love of plunder. It was a time when local liberty
still existed and when promotion came to others than
mere favorites of the Court and the Church. Portugal
was but an insignificant part of the Iberian Peninsula
and her population was only 1,000,000; but big men
are not necessarily the product of big countries, for in
that case Russia would be the nursery of European
heroes.

This remarkable prince did not himself take part in
the expeditions, but from a secluded workshop at Cape
St. Vincent he inspired the men whom he fitted out
for distant enterprises, and himself raised the funds and
calculated the chances of success from a profound study
[ 136]

PORTUGUESE GREATNESS

of all the information about the world and its products
which was then accessible.

In early days the Far East was a vague country, to
which Christians had access only through Venetian and
Genoese traders, who sailed to the ends of the Mediter-
ranean, to Constantinople, to Egypt, and there ex-
changed the wares of Europe for products which had
been brought by caravans across China, or on Arab
dhows from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Nothing very distinct was known of the Far East,
but that little was calculated to create a strong desire
for nearer acquaintance. Early travellers reported fab-
ulous wealth, and that, combined with the fact that this
wealth was being appropriated exclusively by infidels,
was enough to give the Church, also, a lively interest
in the question.

The Turks were then the terror of all Christian na-
tions, from Vienna to Lisbon, and the Church regarded
with particular favor any person or government that
accomplished anything calculated to injure Mohamme-
dan influence. Therefore the idea of seeking access to
the Far East by way of the African shores was one par-
ticularly congenial to the people of that time, for the
reason that all the approaches to the treasures of India
were guarded by the Arabians, who recognized the
Sultan as the head of their Church.

History delights in telling of heroic deeds, and we
are all inclined to give the hero his due. But heroes
must have money in order to fit out the expeditions
necessary for Ihe exhibition of their peculiar virtties,
l-'xpcdil ions are costly things, and even Portugal of (he
fiflcciilli centurv, backed as it was with tiic wealth of
[ '.^7 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the Church, could not afford to send out exploring-
ships that did not come back with produce enough to
pay expenses. Much as we to-day glory in the deeds
of our pioneering ancestors, we may as well recognize
the truth that the early navigators and explorers did
next to nothing that was not directly connected with
the procuring of pecuniary profit.

Prince Henry was forty-seven years old before his
efiforts for discovering the sea route to India met with
any success. He had made a few attempts to work
his way down the African coast, but found no great
encouragement until 144.1, when his ships got well
within the tropics on the Guinea coast and laid the
foundation of his country's greatness by kidnapping
some native chiefs. These were subsequently ransomed
for a handsome cargo of slaves, gold dust, and other
precious things, and on returning to Lisbon, the people,
from the King down, became enthusiastic in the cause
of an exploration which promised kindred results. The
Pope cheerfully gave his blessing to the enterprise, and,
furthermore, gave Portugal a monopoly of all trade
round Africa to India. The slave-trade was found to
be the most profitable element of the early ventures,
and from this date cargoes of negroes were sold in
Portugal, the proceeds of which enriched the Church
as well as the heroes, who needed the money for new
conquests. Discovery was the best paying investment
of the day, particularl}'^ the discovery of negroes.

In 1446 trade was established with the African coast
near Cape Verde on an island called Arguim, the same
which two hundred years later was occupied by Prus-
sians from Brandenburg — but not for long.
[ 138 ]

PORTUGUESE GREATNESS

In 1487 the Cape of Good Hope was rounded, and
further voyages received still more ample government
support, from the fact that in 1492 the voyage of Co-
lumbus created a well-grounded fear that the Spaniards
might dispute the control of the Eastern trade. At
one time, Portugal fitted out a great fleet for the pur-
pose of preventing Spain from sending ships across
the western ocean, for that was then presumed to be
another way to the Far East. The Papal Bull of 1493,
which divided the new world in half between these two
people, did not satisfy the Portuguese, and they -cnt
an ultimatum to Madrid insisting that the world should
be divided not into eastern and western halves, but
into nortJieni and southern — the south to belong to
Portugal, the north to Spain, Had the Pope adopted
this view, Cortes and Pizarro might have secured Mas-
sachusetts Bay and Virginia instead of Mexico and
Peru, and Portugal might have colonized Australia!
South Africa would now be talking Portuguese and
Canada would be talking Spanish!

The Great Prince Henry died in 1460, but the evil
genius which presided over Portugal would have it
that another great man, the noble Albuquerque, should
take up his work. This pioneer is conspicuous in Por-
tuguese history because he was honest in his official
relations. Six years after the discovery of America.
Vasco da Gama anchored a Portuguese fleet in a har-
bor of India, and within a few years AlI)U(|uer(|ue had
completed the work of that navigator by establishing
the right to trade at i)rclty nearly every port of the
coast .

ThcKing,by virinc of lliis. look lln- titU- which must

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

have sounded large even to people of that day — " Lord
of Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce over Ethio-
pia, Arabia, Persia, and China."

This was mainly " bunkum," for all the conquest
consisted in the right to establish factories or trading
stations. At Macao the Portuguese were regarded as
vassals of the Chinese Emperor, paying tribute annu-
ally.

In 1 5 10 Albuquerque, after great dif^culties, secured
Goa, on the West Coast of India, as a harbor for Por-
tugal. Some six thousand Arabians who had settled
there, w'ere by him put to death, and he divided their
confiscated property among his friends, the new set-
tlers, — compelling them at the same time to marry
natives and identify themselves with the country. This
method had a certain immediate advantage, but the re-
sult was not calculated to dignify the white man in the
eyes of the people he had conquered. The native was
elevated a very little bit; the white man was degraded.
Hence it is that to-day throughout the East, Goa is a
by-word for a mixed breed, part Indian, part negro,
part white, which furnishes ships-stewards, barbers,
and a class of nondescript menials who are regarded
with more pity than respect — a people with neither
pride of ancestry nor hope in posterity.

Henry died at the age of sixty-six, Albuquerque at
sixty-three. They are the two great names of Portu-
guese histor}' — with perhaps one other — that of the
poet Camoens. Albuquerque, like Camoens,* died in

* In Macao I was shown a beautiful garden and grotto overlooking the
sea, where this poet is said to have written a portion of the Lnsiad, a
national epic glorifying the early Portuguese navigators. This poem, a
wearisome copy of Homeric methods, is yet interesting from having been

[ 140 ]

PORTUGUESE GREATNESS

poverty, if not disgrace — both were honest men, and
both made enemies by trying to stem the tide of official
corruption.

Albuquerque died in Goa, in 15 15. With him died
the spirit that made his country great; his loss was
never replaced. The career of Portugal went on for
a while under the impulse which he had imparted, but
the corruption which he had sought to suppress gained
the upper hand, until her rule soon became little more
than despotism tempered by corruption.

produced in part so near to the equator. Macaulay, Kipling, Stevenson
— a few names only occur to one in this connection ; it would be inter-
esting to discuss at length the effect of the tropics upon the intellectual
capacity of the white man.

r 'n 1

XII

THE COLONIAL BREAK-UP OF PORTUGAL

'♦ The judgment of history is that France lost Canada through
the policy of religious exclusiveness which her rulers pursued.'^ — Cf
Parkman's ** Montcalm and Wolfe," 333, viii.

St. Francis Xavier — Jesuits in China — Official Corruption — Mili-
tary Decadence

THE regeneration of the Papacy which followed
close upon the heels of the Reformation of
Martin Luther was felt in the Indies no less
than in America. Goa was the metropoHtan city of
the Portuguese East Indies, and here in 1542 landed
the missionary par excellence, whose life has earned for
him the title of Saint Francis Xavier, He was the first
Jesuit in the Far East, and for so long as his spirit
controlled the clerical administration, European cult-
ure, if not Christianity, spread with extraordinary
rapidity. The Jesuit believed in persuasion. He was
prepared to compromise, if necessary, in order to se-
cure an intellectual ascendancy over those whom he
desired ultimately to convert. In the Orient he met
scholars that by no means acknowledged the superior-
ity of the white man, save in the mere matter of brute
force; and as for his religion, it presented few ad-
vantages over their own. The Jesuits recognized that
if Christianity was to make progress, particularly
[ 142 ]

COLONIAL BREAK-UP OF PORTUGAL

among people so scholarly and tenacious as the Chi-
nese, the ascendancy of the white man's civilization
must be demonstrated. Every effort was therefore
made to gain access to the rulers, to win their confi-
dence by imparting instruction in mathematics, as-
tronomy, and other sciences. Whether the court of
China adopted Christianity to-day or to-morrow, or a
hundred years hence, was of minor consideration to
the Jesuit Fathers — they were preparing the ground
for ultimate harvest.

In the history of Portuguese colonization the only
exception to their chronic state of administrative cor-
ruption and failure is the work done by Jesuits. The
very fact of their expulsion from Goa and Macao, in
1768, is evidence that they were not parties to the vi-
cious administration. It was the excellence of Jesuit
missionary work in India and China, no less than in
Paraguay and Mexico, that united against this order
the vindictive hatred not merely of colonial offtcials,
but of rival orders.

Goa is now a dead city like Macao, existing because
England is her neighbor and gives employment to most
of her population. It had at one time thirty churches
and 30,000 priests, and was a mighty seat of commerce
before the British Lion had learned to swim. But
from the moment that Portuguese soldiers and sailors
had to fight against the white man instead of against
negroes and tlic degenerate people of East India, Por-
tugal commenced to go down, down, down, until even
I he Chinaman and the Mahratta treated it with con-
tempt. Goa to-day is visited only out of curiosity — to
sec the burial place of St. l-'rancis Xavier.

T 11.^ 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

In 1595 the merchants of Amsterdam sent their first
fleet to the East Indies, and in 1600 the English East
India Company established stations in Sumatra and
Java. These were " merchant adventurers," and they
asked of the Portuguese merely the right to trade on
equal terms. But the Portuguese insisted on abso-
lute monopoly, and so, until their possessions were
reduced to a mere handful of feeble stations, they con-
tinued to waste what little money they had, in a war-
fare which ultimately destroyed their prestige among
the natives.

In India government positions were offered for sale,
plundering expeditions were organized against helpless
natives, even the monasteries were called upon for con-
tributions; but all in vain. As fast as Portugal sent
forth ships, they were seized and destroyed by the
enemy.

At the very beginning she produced a few strong
governors like Albuquerque; but after his death the
Government adopted the " Spoils " system, of allowing
colonial officials only a term of three years of office.
The reason for this was that the king, or the party in
power, desired frequent means of rewarding political
or personal friends.

It is hard to fix upon any one date more important
than another in the long down-hill progress of colonial
Portugal. In 1640 Goa was not able to send any ships
home from sheer lack of men and money. Yet at that
time there were more priests than white inhabitants in
the colony.

Two years after the Puritans landed in Massachu-
setts Bay, Portugal lost Ormuz and with it the trade
[ 144 ]

COLONIAL BREAK-UP OF PORTUGAL

of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. She gave letters of
marque to any ships which desired to embark in pri-
vateering against her enemies, but there were no
takers. In her desperate straits she forbade the erec-
tion of any monasteries. Her soldiers were deserting
and turning monks — driven to extremes by the Gov-
ernment's inability either to feed or pay them. Brass
guns were stolen from her forts with such frequency
that iron guns were substituted. Even for the trade
between Goa and neighboring points in the East
Indies, the Portuguese flag offered so little security
that her merchants chartered English ships. In 1661
the most frivolous of the Stuarts did his country enor-
mous service — unintentionally, of course — by wedding
a Portuguese princess, a part of whose dowry was
Bombay. At that time, this was considered as of less
importance than the 2,000,000 of cruzados that went
with it, for Charles always needed money and preferred
one cruzado in hand to all of India that could not be
hypothecated. When Charles died, his widow, Cathar-
ine of Braganqa, retired to a house which is still one
of the interesting features of Chelsea — now occupied
by an American family. Considering that Bombay
was the means of England's ultimately acquiring all
of India, it would seem fitting to-day that this house
be purchased and preserved as a monument for future
generations.

Portugal in the Far East furnished little more of in-
terest after this. Bombay, under English rule, at once
commenced to flotn^ish and to nitract to itself new com-
merce.

Macao sustained herself for a time by the opium
\ > IS I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

trade, but when England (in 1841) settled at Hong
Kong, almost within sight, the principal Macao mer-
chants moved to the British island, and those who did
not, either went home or became monks. In the year
i860 the coolie trade with the United States made its
head-quarters at Macao, but after the close of the
American Civil War, even that little " boom " stopped;
and since then all that has kept Macao alive has beeen
a few gambling tables, in connection with a big hotel.
On the occasion of my visit the harbor of Macao had
so shallowed through neglect, that the commerce of
the port had sunk to what might be expected at a neg-
lected way-station near an important market.

[ 146]

XIII

PORTUGAL IN AMERICA

** But scarcely any man, however sagacious, would have thought
it possible that a trading company [East India Company) separated
from India by 1^,000 miles of sea, and possessing in India only
a few acres for purposes of commerce, would, in less than a
hundred years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the eternal
snow of the Himalayas; would compel Mahratta and Mahommedan
to forget their mutual feuds in common subjection; would tame down
even those wild races which had resisted the most powerful of the
Moguls ; and, having united under its laws 100,000,000 of sub-
jects, would carry its victorious arms far to the east of the Bur-
rampooter, and far to the west of Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace
at the gates of Ava, and seat its vassal on the throne of Candahar.*'
— Macaulay "Clive."

Founding of Brazil — ^Jesuit Missions — Criminals

IN 1500 a strong fleet under Cabral * sailed from
the Tagus with the intention of conquering more of
India. They were forced westward, and sighted, to
their great surprise, the coast of South America. Ac-
cording to the quaint custom of the time, a Portuguese
priest delivered a long sermon to a crowd of curious
natives who understood not a word, and this meant
that Brazil was claimed by the Pope of Rome. Then

* It is not kiKJWii of (■!il)ral t-xiictly when he was Ijoru, or in what

f'car he died ; indeed little of him has come down in history save his
)rief but lieroic period, when lie annexed lira/.il and made a siitccsslul
voyage to the i'iust Indies.

I • 17 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

a notice board was set up, announcing that temporal
control was claimed by the King of Portugal. We
may infer that colonization pure and simple was not
wholly popular at that time, for the reason that of the
whole expedition no one chose to settle here excepting
two criminals condemned to penal servitude for life!

In those days geography was at best a hazy subject,
and even the Pope had to make some daring guesses
when he drew the line between the Eastern and West-
ern World. It had been his intention to give the
whole of the Western Continent to Spain, and he
therefore named a longitude which, in the latitude of
Lisbon, seemed to be equidistant between Europe and
America. But the well-meaning pontiff learned too
late, that the easternmost point of South America was
almost on the same meridian as the Azore Islands. At
that time, however, Spain's power was abundantly
taxed elsewhere, and Portugal herself attached small
importance to Brazil, save as a station where her ships
might refresh themselves on their way to the Cape. ■ A
few years later Spain comforted herself to some extent
by seizing the Philippines (1521), which were obviously
within Portuguese jurisdiction. Though at that time
this excited some geographical controversy, no defi-
nite conclusion was reached, because of the confusing
evidence as to w'here they really were. Spain treated
them as an annex of Mexico, in spite of the fact that
the longitude of Manila is nearly that of Peking. It
is no small credit to the Church that it was strong
enough in that age to keep the peace between these
two colonizing forces.

In the year 1530, about thirty years after its dis-
[ 148 ]

PORTUGAL IN AMERICA

covery, Portugal took steps to colonize Brazil. Great
baronial estates were marked out, running parallel from
the coast like the great scigneuries which border the
St. Lawrence River. These were called donatarios,
and became practically little colonial kingdoms or char-
tered companies, whose rulers did pretty much what
they chose, although nominally subject to the laws of
the mother country. These tracts were given away to
those who proved that they had the necessary capital.
Portugal reserved to herself a certain share in the
profits, but otherwise practically relieved herself of
responsibility so far as the internal administration was
concerned. One-fifth of all precious metals and one-
tenth of the natural products of the soil were reserved
to the Crown. But it is not worth while enumerating
the details of the compact between the Crown and
these colonial chiefs, because there was no adequate
machinery for protecting the Government with respect
to her part of the bargain. The governors of these
great tracts, called capitanias, were given a free hand
as regards subletting or selling to individual settlers,
making internal improvements and, above all, making
the natives work for the white man. It is interestinsf
to note tliat this form of colonization, with all its faults,
managed to introduce a certain degree of local self-gov-
ernment, which at that time was so rare that it gave
Brazil a relative advantage of gixat importance. For
almost two centuries — at least until 1700, when gold
was discovered — Portugal allowed Brazil to go her
own way, much as England neglected her New Eng-
land colonies, and ff)r llu- same reasons. Although
Brazil is now independent, it must be recorded to the
[ M-; ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

credit of little Portugal that it was she and not Spain
who planted in the western world a colony, not only
the largest in area, but the richest and, relatively
speaking, the best governed. The separation from the
mother country in 1828 occurred without violence,
when the population of Brazil, as well as her trade,
largely exceeded that of the mother country. That
this was the case is due largely to the liberty which the
colonists originally secured to themselves, to the agri-
cultural nature of their occupation, to the fact that the
colonists came to found a permanent home. It is fortu-
nate for Brazil that Portugal was so weak !

Of course she passed, or perpetuated, pretty much
the same laws as did Spain, regarding the exclusion of
foreigners from her trade, punishment of heretics, and
the other measures of intolerance which characterize
those years of monopoly and bigotry. -But the harsh-
ness of this legislation was enormously mitigated by
the regard for pecuniary success which animated the
chiefs of the great " chartered companies." None but
Catholics were admitted under Portuguese law. but
where a Crozvn official would have handed a question-
able colonist over to the Inquisition, the agent of a
donatario comforted himself with the reflection that the
money of a heretic weighed just as much as that of a
Papist. Liberty gained a still further start in Brazil
from the fact that in a few of the great donatarios
original promoters were shipwrecked, or for some other
reason failed to take possession of their estates, and,
consequently, communities of " squatters " formed
rude republics without any reference to other law than
what they made for themselves. If the rest of Spanish-
[ 150]

PORTUGAL IN AMERICA

America were not so wretched to contemplate, from the
stand-point of human development, little could be said
for Brazil. Of the fifteen original baronial grants, three
only showed any signs of progress at the middle of the
sixteenth century — at which time the total population
of all Brazil; including the blacks, was only 5,000 souls,
less than the number of emigrants who sometimes land
in a single week in New York. The mother-country
now and then showed her interest by unloading crim-
inals there — the largest cargo, four hundred — arriv-
ing in 1549.

In 1549 arrived the first of the many Jesuits, and
with them came new life into Brazil. Through their
influence the colonists, who had been living rather reck-
lessly with Indian women, were induced to marry and
bring up their children in regular ways; Portuguese
white girls were brought over and married to settlers;
schools were established, and a check was placed upon
a condition of life which in a few years would have
dragged the white man down to the level of the native.
From this day until 1767, when the Jesuits were ex-
pelled, they exerted a strong educational influence
upon the colony, and while they were pretty generally
disliked because of their opposition to slavery, yet even
their enemies conceded that it was to their missions
among the Indians that the white man owed the se-
curity in which he was able to work profitably. The
Jesuits secured the passage of many laws regulating,
if not abolishing, the enslaving of Indians, and these,
though they were not strictly enforced, did much to
discourage tiic cni])l()yincnl of " natives " on estates.
But the result was <;iily to make slave-raiding the more
I 151 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

profitable in Africa, for it is curious that the same
Church which protected the natives of Brazil should
have treated with indifference those of Mozambique
and the Guinea Coast. Brazil, like every other Ameri-
can colony, was at constant war with itself over the
treatment of natives. The planters unanimous on one
side, a certain section of the priesthood and the home
government on the other. Thanks to the indifference
or connivance of Crown colonial officials, slavery had
many centuries of triumph, for it is only in our day that
the equality of all men before the law has been ac-
knowledged throughout the Spanish and Portuguese
world.

The study of colonies is one that cannot be made
merely from books and official reports. The laws of
Portugal and the letters of successive governors do
not prepare the traveller for the political debauchery
that oppresses Delagoa Bay, and the degenerate des-
uetude that characterizes Macao. Nor does Portu-
guese history stoop to notice the mighty trifles which
in time made Brazil a strong nation.

[ 152 ]

XIV

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

Julian Ralph, <'At Pretoria," p. i-] , says of the Boer: ^' All
his attributes are those of the clever stalker of wild and savage
game. ' '

Conflict between Dutch East India Company and the Boers — At-
titude of England Toward the Boers — Future of South Africa

THE nineteenth century has known the Boer of
South Africa mainly through his efforts to
avoid British jurisdiction at the centre of South
Africa. His efforts in this direction have been charac-
terized by so much bravery, moral virtue, and religious
piety, that he has succeeded in drawing to his side the
sympathies of continental Europe as against the one
country whose flag represents freedom of commerce,
religious tolerance, and local self-government.

It is a sad reflection that political and religious
intolerance should have been the mainspring of move-
ments which have done great good to our race. The
religious bigotry of France sent forth the Huguenots;
the petty princes of Germany drove the most enter-
prising of their people to America; Brazil was leavened
by a nucleus of Portuguese Jews who were outlaws in
their own country; the first Englishmen to settle
New England abandoned their country in order to
escape a tyrannical Church government. And if tt)-
[ '5.^ 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

day the white man has planted his foot securely upon
the high central plateau of the great black continent,
we must seek the cause in the intolerance which char-
acterized the rule, not of England, but of her predeces-
sor, the famous Dutch East India Company. In the
cases of Spain, Portugal, and Holland, three countries
whose colonial expansion was abnormally rapid and
whose decline appears at first sight equally remark-
able, certain elements are striking in the very beginning
of their career. Spain and Portugal developed their
greatest strength at a time when national and religious
feeling had been stirred to the utmost by generations
of warfare against the common enemy of their country
and their religion.

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Philip IL,
though acknowledged as the richest and most powerful
of kings, found that his most mighty Armada was
chased into fragments by a handful of English fishing
boats armed with men like Drake and Hawkins. In
the Netherlands his troops, reputed invincible, were
repeatedly baffled by Dutchmen, whose country on the
map hardly shows land enough to make the canals
worth digging.

The years which saw Spain and Portugal rich in sol-
diers but poor in liberty, found little Holland an insig-
nificant state in what pertains to pomp and circum-
stance of government, but invincible in the qualities
of civic and commercial rectitude, religious tolerance,
and aptitude for navigation. Her few square miles of
bog and sand dunes, peopled by a handful of amphibi-
ous heretics, staggered the humanity of that day by
the ease with which they held their own against the

r 154 ]

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

mighty ships of Spain and Portugal. Little by little
Dutchmen learned the secrets of the Far East; learned
the relative prices of spices and silks, and established
peaceful relations with native rulers. Portugal's un-
popularity was Holland's opportunity. Her leading
merchants wisely concluded that they might profit by
Spanish and Portuguese failure; contest the commerce
of the world, not as conquerors or even monopolists,
but merely as traders who would fight only when
themselves attacked.

In 1602, therefore, was formed that famous Dutch
East India Company, which embodied the highest com-
mercial spirit of the age and was a huge step in ad-
vance of anything conceived in Spain or Portugal. It
was to some extent a national institution, its shares
being held by the different chambers of commerce
throughout the country. From the beginning it re-
flected the correct mercantile habits of the nation, and
gained its ascendancy in the Far East by constantly
holding commercial honor high. The clerks and agents
of this company were held to strict accountability, were
forbidden to trade on their own account and, above
all, were forbidden to approach the natives in any other
capacity than merchants. They sent no missionaries,
and (lid not, in the beginning, even care to build forts.
The trade they offered was so valuable that Eastern
merchants found it to their interest to cultivate Dutch-
men in proportion to their dislike of T^orlugal and
Spain. In j.-ip.-iii (he story is still current that Dutch
tr.'iclcrs were rulniitted when the i'ortuguosc had been
driven out, because when interrogated regarding the
religion wliiili llie fri;n"s Ii.kI made odious, the new-
I ^S^ 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

comers answered that they were not Roman Catholics,
" they zi'cre Dutchmen! "

The awakening of Holland as a colonial power was
under conditions somewhat analogous to those under
which Spain and Portugal produced her heroes. At
the end of the sixteenth century the Dutch had
emerged from a period of warfare against a political
and religious domination which they detested, and were
in exactly that state of national exaltation which fits
men for enterprises of a daring nature.

At this time England and Holland had a common
bond in hatred of Spain and the Papacy, and neither
country had yet developed strength enough to make
her progress seem a danger to that of the other.

Modern economists have had much to say against
privileged trading companies, no doubt influenced by
the fact that nearly all of them have ended in bank-
ruptcy, owing to corruption and mismanagement.

The Dutch East India Company did not live to see
the end of the eighteenth century, though it lived too
long for its reputation; yet with all the faults of its late
years, it accomplished a task at the beginning that
would have been almost impossible without such an
organization. The fitting out of a merchant ship three
hundred years ago was almost as much of a venture as
in our day the journey of Stanley across Africa. To-
day the trading-ship captain has a chart of the seas
he proposes to navigate; in every port he finds a con-
sul who watches the interest of his flag; his cargo is
consigned to an agent who unloads the vessel for him,
loads it again, and settles all accounts with the owners.
He finds assistance not merely at the hands of his own
[ 156]

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

countrymen, but from those of every other nation, and,
in short, the trade to the Far East to-day resembles
more a yacht cruise in one's own waters than the voy-
ages we are considering when the Dutch East India
Company was formed.

There were then ahnost no charts or light-houses or
consuls or agents of any kind, to help the mariner in
difficulty. If his ship was wrecked, the crew, as well as
the cargo, were deemed the property of those into
whose hands they fell. Dutch and English sailors were
put to death or enslaved when they fell into Spanish or
Portuguese hands — indeed in those days the white
man fared better at the hands of the Japanese and Chi-
nese coasting population, than at those of his fellow-
Christians on the shores of Europe. In those days not
only was war a trade, but trade itself was war, and
costly as all war must be. Trade, therefore, had to be
organized and treated as a form of war. Dutch mer-
chants, before the founding of the company, had no
means of regulating the interval between cargoes. A
ship might enter an Eastern port after a costly journey
and find that one or more ships had preceded her
and overstocked the market; whereas, had those ves-
sels come at regular intervals, each might have realized
fair profit.

The Dutch East India Company was, therefore,
nothing more than a practical application of com-
mercial principles to a coninicrcial (|ucslion far beyond
the capacity of a small corporation. We see the same
sort of thing every day in America under the name of
a " trust," wliicli unites uikIct one control a nunibtM- of
industrial enterprises of .inalogous character for the
\ '57 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

purpose of economy in administration and, conse-
quently, immunity from competition.

The original monopoly of the Dutch East India
Company was a " trust " in which the chief trading
communities were represented as share-owners. This
trust was national to the extent that it was subject
to government inspection and was the standard-bearer
of Dutch power in the Eastern world. If ever there
was such a thing as a beneficent monopoly it was the
Dutch East India Company, so long as it was adminis-
tered according to the spirit of those who framed its
original constitution.

But Holland, unfortunately for her, did not live up
to the constitution of her great monopoly. Her
progress in the Far East was so rapid, the resistance
of Spain and Portugal so feeble, that little by little she
abandoned those liberal trading principles which had
animated her at the outset, and entered upon a policy
of exclusion which not merely involved her in war
with England, but lost her the good-will of the natives,
who had been her chief support from the very begin-
ning.

She began to pass harsh laws, to limit the planting
of spice-trees in order that the price might remain
high — her inspectors made annual tours in order to
destroy all plants in excess of those allowed by law,
natives were forbidden to trade with other than
Dutchmen, and they were forced to sell their products
at prices that were not fixed with reference to the
producers.

To enforce these laws, which recalled the tyranny
of Spain and Portugal, the Dutch had necessarily to
[ 158 ]

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

revert to the same means — costly military establish-
ments — forts and garrisons. Thus the profits of the
company became more and more swallowed up in cost
of administration.

Then too, little by little, a large permanent staff
of officials grew up to watch over the enlarged admin-
istrative area, and with this force was introduced the
same sort of corruption which afflicted Spain and Por-
tugal. The original constitution of the company con-
templated only trade, and in the earlier years the ser-
vants of the company were mainly sailors and clerks,
with a few agents at main distributing points. But
when the company departed from this principle in
order to impose laws upon people with whom they
had originally sought only the right to exchange Eu-
ropean goods for an equivalent in spices, then a new
departure was made — trade expansion became " em-
pire " — a very different thing, as we shall see later on.

From 1700 on, the company, alarmed by the wan-
ing in profits, sought to improve matters by changing
her officials more frequently — but the result was even
worse, for the man who expected to remain but three
years at his post was equally disposed to make his
fortune before returning home. Clerks who left Hol-
land on a small weekly salary returned rich men.
This condition was scandalous, but the Ciovernnioiit
proved uncc|ual to the task of introducing a reform.
It is only after studying the failures of Spain and Por-
tugal and Holland in this direction that one can ap-
preciate Knglaiid, which has commissioned many
privileged c(jnipanies; lias checked iheni when they
have gone wrong, called them to account without in-
[ 159 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

terfering with their commercial usefulness, and shown
the world that she can produce administrators like
Cecil Rhodes and Warren Hastings without endan-
gering the liberties of her people at home — or the
rights of her colonists abroad.

The Dutch paid their officials poorly — and in con-
sequence they secured men who attempted to make
money in other ways.

To-day Germany pays her officials also very little,
but this is the day of telegraphs and fast steamers
— when officials at Kiao Chow or Dar es Salaam can
be checked from Berlin almost as easily as though
they were in Posen or Metz. But in the seventeenth
century the Governor at Batavia, on a salary of 12,000
gulden, had little to fear during his term of office.
There was no regular post, and all his brother officials
were practically fellow-conspirators, leagued against
the natives for purposes of gain. The Dutch settle-
ments in the East Indies soon offered little advantage
over those of Portugal, save in the facts that the Dutch
did not interfere with native religion, and did not prac-
tise slavery to any great extent. The policy of the
East India Company became more and more tyran-
nical and narrow, but, as its activity was limited mainly
to gathering the fruits of spice-trees, there was no
occasion for the employment of large bodies of slaves,
as in the plantations and mines of the Portuguese and
Spanish colonies. The Dutch required but a small
number of servants, for domestic purposes, and slavery
under such conditions caused but slight complaint.
Holland attached much importance to the Cape as a
station where her ships might refresh themselves on
[ 160 I

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

the way to and from Java, but the Dutch East India
Company, far from showing a desire to colonize the
place, passed regulations which made the life of a
white colonist almost intolerable. Nothing, perhaps,
illustrates more completely the relative insignificance
of the Cape Colony in the eyes of the Dutch than that
it was made a mere appanage of Java. A crime com-
mitted at Cape Town had to be decided, when ap-
pealed, at Batavia, not at Amsterdam. It is from this
long connection with Java that to-day we see so many
Malays about the streets of Cape Town, though they
are practically unknown in the interior or farther up
the coast.

But in spite of the selfishness that characterized
the Dutch East India Company toward the latter half
of the seventeenth century, so excellent was the cli-
mate at this place that a thin stream of emigration
found its way thither, partly Dutch, partly French
Protestants — and these were from the outset at war
with the repressive measures of the Dutch Govern-
ment. Thus, naturally, and almost imperceptibly,
was bred a race roughly analogous to the American
" Frontiersman " who chafed under the restraints of
old-world legislation, and whose progress was marked
by perpetual warfare with natives and wild beasts.
The Great Trek of 1836 would have been impossible
but for the preceding generations of discontented
colonists, wlio ended the dominion of their legal rulers
by settling on the fringes of civilization .-ind becoming
a law unto themselves and to the natives who came
witliin range of their rifles. These Boers were like the
American backwoodsmen, lougli in fibre, lawless as
I ir.i 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

regards the law of men whom they did not acknowl-
edge, but devout Puritans as regards the law of God —
at least that portion of it which they regarded as pecul-
iarly suited to their requirements. Their life was not
favorable to the founding of schools and churches.
They became nomads — living in a huge tented ox-
wagon, or " prairie-schooner," as it would be called in
America. To-day, in spite of the railway, these great
family ox-wagons may still be seen, drawing the
Boers farther and farther from the civilization they
detest. That movement must proceed as it did in
America, until the " cow-boy " finds no more frontier,
and must perforce accommodate himself to civiliza-
tion as best he can. The spirit of the frontiersman is
a strange thing, and must be understood if the history
of South Africa is to be intelligible. Blood counts for
much, and the Boer could not show his present tenac-
ity of purpose did he not acknowledge his Dutch and
Huguenot ancestr)'. But the Dutchman of Amster-
dam can no more understand the Boer than could the
cultivated New Englander understand the people of
his own race who lived by choice a life of savagery be-
yond the Mississippi fifty years ago. Legislators of to-
day commit the common mistake of regarding the De
Wets and Cronjes and Krugers as Europeans who in
our day have become rebels. We are apt to think of
them as of the emigrants who land in New York, and
in a few months become voters or anarchists. We can-
not accustom ourselves to the historic evolution of a
man who has been two hundred years an outlaw — who
has been suckled on principles which we count as
treasonable, but which his leaders regard as conform-
[ 162 ]

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

ity to the will of God. It is the Boer and not the Eng-
lishman who conquered the upland of South Africa;
he it is who represents white aristocracy from the
Zambesi to Cape Town; he regards himself as the
superior man, physically and morally, and he resents
scornfully the pretension of any government toward
suzerainty over him. In a rough way his case bears
analogy to that of the strange community of English
Boers who, with a pecuHar reHgion, hardy constitu-
tions, and boundless ignorance, penetrated the Ameri-
can desert and created a splendid isolation for them-
selves in Utah. These people asked no favors of the
United States, save to be let alone; they occupied
land which was of no value save through the irrigation
which they introduced; they minded their own busi-
ness, assisted in spreading the white race amidst sav-
age tribes, and, with the one exception of polygamy,
did nothing to excite the ill-will of the paramount gov-
ernment.

But precious metals were discovered in their neigh-
borhood, the New England Yankee knocked at the
Mormon gates; he was refused admission — so he went
in without. The fight commenced, and now the Mor-
mon figures in American political life just as any
other white man, no more and no less. The Mormon
had thought himself as strong physically, as he con-
ceived himself to be theologically infallible. When his
mistake was demonstrated, he conformed to the new
order of liiiu^s; and so will the liocr.

As one who has been hospitnl)Iy entertained by the
l»()crs in lonely farm houses, who has found among
them men of rounded rulltire, of honorable instincts,

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

and fine physical courage, the subject is for me not
an easy one to treat without causing misunderstand-
ing. In situations that are paradoxical, it is hard to
make any statement not open to contradiction. There
are so many different kinds of Boers, that in using
the word I am conscious that it comprises almost as
much variety as the word Englishman — which in-
cludes the Piccadilly dandy and the East End coster-
monger.

The Boer most in evidence of late is he of the
Kruger * type — the man who hugs the memory of
Slaagter's Nek. The average Englishman knows no
more of Slaagter's Nek than he does of Nathan Hale,
the Yale graduate whose hanging during the Revolu-
tionary War determined the execution of ]\Iajor Andre.
But every American school-boy reveres the memory
of Nathan Hale, and the Kruger Boer holds in sacred
recollection the martyrs of Slaagter's Nek.

The story in a nutshell is that the English Govern-
ment, in 1815, condemned to death and hanged half
a dozen Boers who had defied the authority of the
English courts and had been guilty of rebellion
against the Crown. The case was perfectly clear —
quite as clear as that of Jameson in 1896 — but a large
part of Boer public sentiment, even while deprecating
the action of the rebels, refused to admit the right of
England to govern the colony which Holland had
ceded to her in the year of Waterloo. The Boers did
not read much, and cared little for the opinion of

*In the spelling of Kruger I am following the orthography employed
by the late President himself in my presence. Why the English and
American press persists in putting two dots over the u I cannot under-
stand.— P. B.

[ 164 ]

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

learned jurists. They believed, with the late Henry
George, that land should be the property of those who
made good use of it, and in their opinion it was they
and not the English who were improving the soil of
South Africa. Thus from the very beginning, British
expansion in South Africa caused a succession of con-
flicts with the Boers, who, though overborne by num-
bers, always retired — undismayed, if not undefeated.

In the early days — before 1815 — the Dutch Gov-
ernment disliked the Boer, and persecuted him more
than ever did the English in the succeeding years.
But that fact has been lost sight of nowadays, when
the Dutch of Holland seek to demonstrate that the
Boer is their kith and kin. The German now speaks
in the most affectionate way of his cousin, the Boer,
for it is the fashion to pretend that the Boers would
naturally welcome German or Dutch control in South
Africa. But this view is entertained by people who
take counsel of their hopes rather than of history.
The Boer dislikes the Hollander cordially — their ways
are very far apart, and the supercilious clerk of Rot-
terdam excites only contempt in Pretoria. He was
tolerated because Dr. Leyds declared him necessary.

As for the official German, the Boer of South Africa
knows him as a neighbor far more dangerous than
England. Efforts were made after the Jameson Raid
to trek away into German West Africa, but those who
took part in this came back so much discouraged that
llicy effectually put an end to all desire of nearer ac-
<|naintance with their cousins from Berlin. Tndood,
contact with official Germany has done nuich to recon-
cile the Boer to his lot mider (he English (lag.

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

The Boer of the Kruger type, who has been the fore-
most in ambushing the advance column of Enghsh
progress, is grossly misrepresented when credited with
a preference among European governments. He dis-
trusts them all equally. He looks upon the man of
modern Europe as the Puritans of the Restoration
looked upon frivolous cavaliers.

Of all Holland's great colonial empire South Africa
is the only land where the white man has bred a strong
race, and where Dutch is spoken. To be sure, the
Dutch of South Africa is not intelligible to a classically
bred professor of Leyden — it bears the same relation
to the mother-tongue as does the jargon of German-
Switzerland to the academical accents of Hanover or
Bremen. Each can understand the other, after a pre-
liminary course of misunderstanding — much as Span-
iards get along with Portuguese, or Norwegians with
Danes. The Dutch tongue may live for some time
yet as a secondary language in certain portions of the
country, but every Boer recognizes, even to-day, that
English is necessary for him, if he wishes to move out
into the broad current of modern life; and thus with-
out any special legislation on the subject, Dutch will
become obsolete. The Huguenots gave up their
speech for Dutch, the Boers will surrender theirs for
English.

A learned German official recently justified the ex-
clusion of Boers from German West Africa on the
ground that it would be a national disgrace if Dutch
prevailed in a German colony!

The Germans are not the only ones who have
sought to compel language to follow the flag, and
\ i66 ]

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOER

they will probably recognize their mistake as others
have had to — too late. The Government of Paul
Kruger made desperate efforts, in 1896, to drive Eng-
lish out of the Transvaal schools and to substitute
Dutch in its stead, but the result was that Boers sent
their children to the Orange Free State, where more
liberal maxims prevailed.

It is no small praise to the Dutch character to
recall that Boers and Anglo-Saxons are the only colo-
nists that have kept their blood pure. The Portu-
guese and Spaniards not merely tolerated the abomi-
nable practice of cohabitation with negroes, they even
encouraged it as a means of more rapidly producing
a population calculated to withstand tropical climates.

In early New England, as among the Boers, the
Bible was at the bottom of this disinclination to mingle
with the native. The Boer looked upon the Kaf^r as
the Englishman of 1620 looked upon the red Indian,
as one of the heathen tribes which they, as a chosen
people, were called upon to exterminate, after the ex-
ample set by Joshua, and, indeed, Joshua reminds me
much of Paul Kruger.

[ i^>7 1

THE DUTCH COLONIST OF TO-DAY

"They (the American backwoodsmen of i'j'/6) were relentless, re-
vengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity ; they were also
upright, resolute, and fearless ; loyal to their friends and devoted to
their country.'''' — Roosevelt, " Winning of the West," I., 133.

Traces of Holland in New York — Transvaal — British Guiana —
Contrast of Boer and Dutchman

IF any general proposition regarding colonies
could be maintained, it would possibly be that
colonial prosperity follows colonial liberty. Some-
times liberty in the colonies has preceded liberty in
the mother-country. The advantage which Holland
originally possessed (1600) over her Spanish and
Portuguese rivals was largely due to greater commer-
cial liberality. So long as she had no other rivals her
relative superiority remained, but she clung to her
system long after it had proved inferior to that of
England.

Yet the traveller to-day marvels at the permanent
impression left by the early Dutch upon colonies
which have long ceased to be theirs. Even to-day
the most substantial buildings in the Hudson River
Valley are massive stone farm-houses recalling the
government of the Dutch East India Company, which
in 1 62 1 occupied New York as a trading post. But
[ 168 ]

THE DUTCH COLONIST OF TO-DAY

the Dutchman of New York was no match for the
Yankee from Connecticut and Massachusetts — no
chartered company could hold its own against such
competition. The Swedes who had planted colonies
in Delaware and New Jersey shared the same fate.
It was no act of government that killed these colonial
efforts, for at that time New York presented but slight
strategic importance either to the soldier or the trader.
The Dutch and Swedish colonists remained and
flourished, but their children preferred the English
language, for purely practical reasons. Dutch domin-
ion in North America is now recalled to the tourist
only by such names as " Kaater's Kill Clove; " " Spuy-
ten Duyvil; " " Hoboken; " " Harlem," etc.

At the Cape of Good Hope, Dutch occupation is at
once suggested by the many massive quaint gables
that adorn the residences of former proprietors from
Amsterdam and The Hague. These buildings, of
which, perhaps, that of the Constantia estate is the
most interesting example, were eminently suited to
English requirements, and the style has been perpetu-
ated over a large portion of the Cape Colony. There
is a grand yet cosy atmosphere about these estates;
magnificent straight avenues of shade-trees; gardens
surrounded by massive hedges, and a cultivation
strangely minute when compared to the slovenly ag-
riculture of the Transvaal.

If a stranger, without previous knowledge, wore to
inspect the I'ocr Kcpnblii-s from a balloon, he would
conclude llinl he was in a land of Amcricui cow-box s.
to judge from the arcliilectin-c prevailing. Tlic sepa-
ration of the Boer from bis mother-country is much
I 169 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

more complete than the separation of the Cape Town
Englishman from the Cape Town Dutchman. One
might roughly draw an analogy by saying that the
American from Boston has more in common with an
Englishman than with a cow-boy of Arizona, or an
old-time miner of California. The Bostonian has
propagated on American soil the institutions and
social forms of his English ancestors. But the same
American, moving into the Far West, is compelled,
for the sake of mere existence, to improvise a new
society, new means of self-protection, and even new
implements for his daily work. One generation of
such life has produced in America a race of men speak-
ing a slang of their own; familiar with Indian and
Mexican peculiarities; holding a strange code of politi-
cal if not of moral ethics; full of violent contrasts —
bravery and bragging; profanity and piety; tender-
ness and cruelty; generous in hospitality, yet hand-
ling a revolver with fatal facility. Place the American
frontiersman in a Boston drawing-room and you have
a contrast no less startling than had you introduced
a Chinaman. Introduce the conventional Englishman
of education into the same drawing-room, and by
comparison the difference is scarcely worth noting.
The Bostonian and the man of London will have a
thousand points of sympathetic contact in literature,
art, municipal problems, social evolution, administra-
tive reforms, international politics, and the endless
chain of interests that bind together the great com-
mercial cities of the world. The same Bostonian
would listen with bulging eyes and distracted ears to
his kinsman from the foot-hills of the Rocky Moun-
[ 170 ]

THE DUTCH COLONIST OF TO-DAY

tains. He would marvel at a jargon, part Spanish,
part Indian, part American; an etymology and gram-
mar of racy recklessness, and a range of ideas wholly
outside of anything dreamed of in the academic rou-
tine of our venerable colleges.

The same contrast is afforded by a study of the
actual Boer of Pretoria and the actual Dutchman of
Amsterdam or even Cape Town. When Paul Kruger
paid his first visit to the British Governor-General at
the Cape, local rumor said that the single concession
he made to European civilization was to remove
his boots when invading the linen sheets of his host.
This story is not necessarily true, but its currency in
Cape Town indicates the local feeling regarding the
relative civihzation of the Transvaal Boer and the old
country Dutch.

At the Cape I recall with infinite gratitude a Dutch
Colonial Dame — a charming widow — whose house
was a rendezvous for the most interesting social ele-
ments, English no less than Dutch. She showed me
a house full of rare Dutch tiles and porcelain ware,
delicate wood-carvings, and a few well-chosen studies
by Dutch masters. She spoke French, German, and
English as well as she did Dutch, and in her company
it seemed that I was in the house of an Amsterdam
merchant prince, rather than 6,000 miles away among
people who glory in the name of Boer. Her service
was performed by tidily uniformed servants; her table
appointments left nothing to be desired.

From the drawing-room of this lady to that of the
Governor-General was a step that did not i)crccptil)ly
change one's social surroundings. The important in-

I '/> 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

habitants of Cape Town, whether English or Dutch
by extraction, viewed social and even political obliga-
tions from very much the same point of view. There
was a general consensus of opinion that on the whole
the English Government was about the best that the
colony could wish and that, while there was plenty
of occasion for grumbling in local matters, all were
practically united on the broad question of the flag
that was to dominate.

The Boer of Cape Town looked upon the Boer of
the Transvaal as a species of anachronistic cow-boy,
who had his rough virtues, but must perforce yield
to the advancing tide of railway progress. The idea
that South Africa should ever become a Dutch com-
munity under Transvaal leadership was no more seri-
ously entertained in 1896, in Cape Town, than in
America that the government should pass under the
yoke of Mormonism.

In the parlors of Cape Town, Paul Kruger is an
anomaly no less strange than the Arizona " cow-
puncher " in a Beacon Street Club. Paul Kruger
represents the Boer who has spent his life in an ox-
wagon; to whom civilization has appeared mainly as
a constraint upon liberty. Circumstances have forced
him now to live under a roof, and to conform some-
what to the habits of white men in other parts of the
world, but all this he does with manifest reluctance
and to the smallest possible extent.

When I first had the honor of visiting this strange

man, he had outside of his house an encampment of

mounted burghers by way of military escort; at the

same time there was not even a black girl to open his

[ 172 ]

THE DUTCH COLONIST OF TO-DAY

front door. His house- was not merely conspicuous by
its shabbiness, but much more so by the evidence of
neglect on the part of its occupiers. It looked to me
as though the President wished for private reasons to
advertise his indifference to civilized habits, in the
same way that some representatives of labor think it
well to roll up their shirt-sleeves before mounting the
platform.

Paul Kruger at the head of the Transvaal in 1896
was as strange a sight as Mr. Richard Croker would
be as President of the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion.

Holland has left a deep impression at Cape Town,
but her footprints can be scarcely recognized in the
alleged Republic beyond the Vaal River.

In South America the Dutch had once a grand
colonial opportunity in what is now British Guiana,
a colony which to-day, in spite of the low price of
sugar, forms an important element of the English
Colonial Empire. Demerara is a clean and busy town,
cut up by straight canals full of splendid water-lilies,
some of them so big that a baby could float away on
one. Even to-day, though the Dutch language is no
longer heard, Dutch law prevails, and also Dutch tidi-
ness and Dutch love for flower-gardens and canals.
Under British auspices and freedom British Guiana
has made progress, but Dutch Guiana next door has
not proved so successful, in spite of the fact that both
colonies have practically the same soil and climato.*

♦ In iX()o iSrilisli CJuinnaexiJortivl to tl>e extent of more tlian $12,000,-
000, wliili; tlic exports of l)iittli (luiana amounted to less than $2,o<i(),-
()()(>. 'I'lie revenues of tli<; lirilisli colony for I Scjo were almost $^, 000, 000,
wliile in tli(r n<i(.;lil)orin(; I)iil(li (nloiiy tli<'y w(Te hut $()I 7,001),

Mn^^lisli tms iiraclically driven out I lie Dulili lani;ua^;e, even in Dutclj
Guiana.

f '7.^ 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

While at Demerara, the present Auditor General,
Mr. Darnell Davis, expressed himself as quite satisfied
with Guiana as a place in which to bring up white
children, and he pointed to many instances in support
of his statement. He himself is a good illustration of
the fact that even in the tropics the white man may
develop high literary activity.

The poverty of Dutch Guiana consisted not in the
fact that the English flag supplanted that of Holland,
but that English energy, common-sense, and good
government took the place of an administration con-
ceived in the spirit of monopoly.

In the Far East to-day the Dutch have a magnifi-
cent empire, but administrative short-sightedness has
done much to limit their development of her islands
there.

The years most fortunate for Java were those during
the Napoleonic wars, when an English Governor re-
formed her colonial administration in the spirit of
greater commercial liberty. This was the famous Sir
Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore.

When the English surrendered Java in 1816, even
the Dutch Government realized that it could not re-
turn wholly to the antiquated system of exclusion that
had characterized the previous administration, and an
efifort was made at something in the nature of a com-
promise. Reforms were tolerated which would have
seemed revolutionary in the seventeenth century, but
which in our own seem strangely inadequate. Slavery
was nominally forbidden, but a species of servitude
existed which amounted pretty much to the same
thing. The whole island was over-governed, and the
[ 174 ]

THE DUTCH COLONIST OF TO-DAY

administration enconrag-ed the exploiting of the col-
ony for the white official, with scant regard for the
colonist, whether white, yellow, or brown. Java pre-
sents to-day a magnificent picture of superficially
successful colonization. <

T T75 1

XVI

THE BOER AT HOME

" The struggle {iJjd-IjSj) zvas a revolt against the whole
mental attitude of Britain in regard to America, rather than
against any one special act or set of acts. ^^ — Roosevelt, " Win-
ning of the West," I., p. 37.

Domestic Life of the Boer To-day — Comparison between South
Africa and North America

THERE are Boers and Boers. Here is mine.
At the close of day, shortly after the Jame-
son Raid, we reached the Caledon River,
which separates Basutoland from the Orange Free
State. The river was swollen, and the leaders of my
Cape cart floundered amidst the bowlders at the bot-
tom of this rapid stream. The water rose above the
floor of our vehicle, and for a moment it looked as
though we might be swept away — horses, wagon,
baggage, and all. While matters were at their worst,
there appeared on the other side of the stream the
figure of a long-bearded horseman, one arm waving
up into the blazing sunset like a benevolent semaphore
to a ship in distress. We followed his mute directions,
and soon our four plucky ponies were scrambling up
the steep bank — in safety, it is true, yet so banged
about were we that, after escaping disaster by water,
it looked as though we were reserved for a general
smash in the ruts and gullies of the veldt.
[ 176 ]

THE BOER AT HOME

It was a venerable Boer who had signalled us to a
safe crossing, and when we were face to face he in-
spected us critically, and asked the usual questions as
to whence we had come, whither we were going, who
we were, and of what nation. My companion was
English, I was American, and we had come from
breaking bread with the Governor of a British Pro-
tectorate. The Jameson Raid was fresh in all men's
minds, and we were asking hospitality of a Boer. He
wasted few words, gave an ambiguous grunt by way
of telling us that we might put up at his ranch, and
galloped away to tell his wife that two " tenderfeet "
were on the way and she must grind a bit more coffee.

So we steered slowly in his wake across country
on the open prairie, along a trail where the horses
had to pick their way as they would in the foot-hills
of Colorado. From an elevation the African veldt
seems one vast, smooth plain, but the rider feels the
gullies and other pitfalls which may break his springs
or his horses' legs, albeit too insignificant for notice
at a distance. The lonesome prairie was relieved here
and there by strange, flat-topped, isolated mounds
rising straight up out of the dead level of endless
desolation, suggesting, in the deep glow of the dying
sun, monster coffins resting upon a burning crust.
The effect was powerful, for in Africa the sky seems
nearer, the stars sliinc more intensely, and the setting
sun burns so fiercely that (lie sliadows of rocks and
square-topped mountains run along (o the eastward
like streams of H(|iiid black, 'filings far away seeniod
close at hand, and it was a long stretch of bumping
to us before we reached (lie cabin whose wreath of

f ^77 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

smoke from the hospitable chimney we had followed
for many miles. It was a cold reception that we got,
measured by the forms laid down at dancing-school,
but so far as practical details were concerned it was
beyond praise. The long-bearded Boer fetched his
lantern and showed us a shed where our cattle could
find shelter for the night. Of course we did the man-
ual work ourselves, in which we had silent but efifec-
tive assistance from our host. After " outspanning,"
rubbing the horses down, and giving them a good
measure of oats from the stores of our host, we were
led to the pump, where we washed our hands before
entering the house to make the acquaintance of his
family.

Anyone who has seen the pioneer ranchman's home
in the Wild West of America can readily picture to
himself the sort of home a Boer farmer would have
in a country where roads and even bridges are want-
ing; where land is cheap but everything else is dear;
where houses are many miles apart; where black labor
is both scarce and bad; where the white man is
thrown upon his own resources to an extent wholly
unknown in Europe or the settled sections of America.
These surroundings are not conducive to grand
pianos, billiard-tables, oil paintings, or even books.
No postman raps at the ranch door, and to go shop-
ping means the loss of a full day with a team of horses.
Under such conditions men read few books, but they
read them often; small-talk does not flourish, but
men's minds are tempered in the fire of silence and
concentrated thought. The Boer who led us into his
house had come to this country as a child, with the
[ 178]

THE BOER AT HOME

Great Trek of 1836; his ancestors had come to the
Cape a hundred and fifty years before that.

As he opened the door of his cabin we were greeted
by his stolid and rotund wife and a flaxen-haired and
very pretty daughter about eighteen years old. They
did not smile or tell the conventional He that they were
delighted to see us, but each shook hands with us by
way of letting us know that they intended, for that
night at least, to spare us the discomfort of sleeping
out on the prairie.

Nothing was said on either side, and we sat on
chairs which were backed up against the wall, while
mother and daughter laid the cloth — a nice clean one
— and prepared supper. Several rifles were on pegs
above the door; some pictures taken from Christmas
numbers of illustrated weeklies brightened the walls;
there was a vast, florid, old-fashioned Dutch clock,
and in one corner of the room an American parlor
organ of very small size. Among the few books were
a Dutch Bible, Longfellow's poems, and a Shake-
speare, besides a few books on cattle diseases, horse-
breaking, and one or two religious books whose names
I forget. Dutch was the language of the family, but
all were familiar with English as well. Two or three
young Boers joined the party, and these also sat
silently about the room, much as though it was a
corpse we were expecting, instead of a very welcome
supper.

Slowly the I'oer uiind was absorbing us; for the
Africander gives his coiirHk'ncc to few, and whore ho
gives it, there it remains. 1 knew them well enough
to know that this process of mental digestion ought

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

not to be disturbed, so I played Quaker meeting in a
manner designed to create the impression that this
was exactly the sort of social hilarity to which I was
accustomed at home.

The supper was delicious; there was plenty of milk
and bread, meat, and stewed fruit. I drank about a
bucket of milk, and this seemed to reassure my host,
whose idea of the Outlander was of one who required
" fire-water " with his food. Of course there was cof-
fee, which, however, I did not touch. As the meal
progressed, the family waxed communicative, and the
old lady's heart softened when my friend informed her
that I had not merely sung in the choir of my college,
but had actually experimented once with Sunday-
school teaching. From that moment I felt that the
prodigal son could give me no further points. I felt
as though I owned the place, and the daughter grew
beautiful as she became unconscious of herself and
joined in the chaff and laughter. With the old man I
talked politics, including the Jameson Raid, and with
the daughter I sang simple songs — German Volks-
lieder and negro melodies. At about nine o'clock the
long-bearded Boer pulled the great Bible from its
shelf, and with a deep, earnest voice read some verses
from the Old Testament. It was about Joshua smit-
ing the Outlanders of Palestine and fighting savagely
for the preserv^ation of a peculiar religion. I do not
know whether my host selected this particular chapter
for the benefit of his guests, or whether it just hap-
pened that we came in for a text which appeared to
have a strange significance at that moment — for had
I not been but a few days before with the leaders of
[ i8o ]

THE BOER AT HOME

the Oiitlander movement? — all of them jailed up in
Pretoria !

After the Bible-reading, a hymn was sung-, and then
the whole family knelt in prayer, following the strong
words of this grand old apostle as he appealed to the
throne of God for guidance in the perplexities of life.

This is the Boer, thought I, that people in England
do not see much of. He does not play at politics; he
does not button-hole newspaper men; he is rarely
heard save in the midst of his family. He owns no
gold-mines, and is happy to grow^ up and die in the
peaceful enjoyment of the little which Providence has
allowed him to have. Such men love peace — but when
they fight they keep at it a long time.

That night I slept on a hard bed, but it was clean,
with white cotton sheets. The fioor of my bedroom
was mother earth, and the walls and ceiling were
rough enough. In the morning a towel was given to
me and the neighborhood of the pump was indicated
— and my wash was none the worse for being in the
open air.

There was plenty of roughness in these Boers, but
no coarseness. Their speech was elementary, but with
them I felt a wholesome nearness to nature and to
things real. Civilization is a j)olite word for a mon-
strous mass of shams, and when things shall be
straightened out at the Judgment Day, I make no
doubt that there will be a surprise in store for lluisc
who are now satisfied lliat they arc more civilized than
my Boer friend on llic borders of Basutoland.

The goofl jicople gave us C(jrfee before wc started
next morning, and begged us to stop with llieni when

I "^' I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

next we travelled that road. We tried to pay for our
entertainment — the mere idea was an offence to them.
Of course we paid for what forage our four horses had
consumed — that was quite another sort of transac-
tion; but so far as the inside of the Boer's house was
concerned, we entered it as guests, and we left it as
members of his family.

I have been the guest in this fashion of many Boers
— in the Transvaal as well as in the Orange Free State.
There may be worse Boers and there may be better.
It is not my purpose to generalize — I tell merely what
I saw.

[ 182 ]

XVII

THE SCANDINAVIAN COLONIST

♦' The Tropics will become more ajid more the source of food supply
for the zvorld.^' — ^Josiah Strong, "Expansion," p. 42, ed.
1900.

Denmark in the West Indies — A Canoe Cruise Round St.
Thomas — Negroes in Santa Cruz

DENMARK, Norway, and Sweden — and we
ought to include Finland as a former Swedish
province, though not of Scandinavian origin
— these countries with a common religion, contigu-
ous territory, common love for the sea, offer some-
thing of a paradox in colonial history. Each of these
countries sends forth each year a large number of her
children to the United States, where they command
better remuneration than those of any other nation.
The best ships of the world are glad to have among
their crew the element they represent, and the Nor-
wegians have almost a monopoly in the manning of
American yachts. Throughout the world, Scandina-
vians are met with wherever men are required who
combine personal courage, education, and lidclity.
They seem to have all the virtues which fit men to
ffjund and carry on colonics, yet (hey have none of
their own worth mentioning.

Norway, which has shown perhaps the least ambi-
I '«.i 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

tion to possess colonies, is a practical democracy like
Switzerland. The less democratic Denmark and the
comparatively aristocratic Sweden have made one or
two efforts of insignificant character. "

On a cruise through the West Indies, not long
since, I fell in with an intelligent and prosperous
Scotch planter, who had been home on his holiday and
was returning to his estates on the Danish island of
Santa Cruz.- Of the many planters I had met among
the Antilles he was one of the few w-ho had nothing
to complain of, yet he was not under the English flag,
and was on an island which had suffered by the aboli-
tion of slavery, quite as much as any other. He asked
me to come and pay him a visit, promising me at
the same time that I should on the spot find an answer
to many questions which vexed me. But he advised
me first to visit St. Thomas, the chief Danish island.
So we parted to meet again in a few weeks.

At St. Thomas I unshipped my little cruising canoe
for a circumnavigation — to discover what there was
Danish about the place. There was a little pink fort
with a handful of fair-haired, blue-eyed soldiers and
officials, some working in a vegetable garden, and
evidently strangers in the place. I had to pay a tax
of $2 for the right to leave the harbor, and for this I
got a pass in the Danish language. But aside from
this there was scant evidence of Scandinavian influ-
ence in the place.

On the streets were English signs, and the Anglo-
Saxon had stamped his impress everywhere, not by
act of government, but by the obvious desire of the
community. At the boat-landing I accosted a vener-
[ 184]

THE SCANDINAVIAN COLONIST

able negro fisherman for particulars about the coast.
He spoke only English; told me his name was " Uncle
Ned," and offered to pilot me all the way round, to
say nothing of acting as steward, cook, or general
utility man. But when he saw my craft, which had a
beam of thirty inches and weighed eighty pounds net,
he shook his woolly head solemnly, and said that:
" De good God won't nebber forgib you for tempting
Providence in dat yere fiddle-box."

However, his love of praise won the day, and he
fitted out his boat with $2-worth of bananas, cocoa-
nuts, rice, sugar, chickens — in fact a good supply for
a week. It was worth the journey to see Uncle Ned
throw his head in the air, and patronize his fellow-
blacks, and expatiate upon the canoe, which he de-
scribed to his fellows as an " American submarine
torpedo boat." For the sake of peace I had warned
him not to touch it for fear of an explosion, and even
to-day I am not penitent for that departure from truth.

The chief port of St. Thomas is the ideal refuge for
the pirate and smuggler, for it is divided by a long
narrow island, the land end of which is separated from
the main island by such shallow water that only coast-
ing craft can get from one side to the other. And
thus were the pursuing men-of-war decoyed in the
olden days. They chased their light-draught enemy
into port at St. Thomas, and while they followed him
in on one side of the long narrow dividing island, the
cunning freebooter slipped out at the other side, by a
j)assage impassable to a man-of-war. ( )ut through
this channel I went, and I could lake soundings with
my double -bladed paddle.

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Uncle Ned was right — Providence took her re-
venge — and a squall capsized the canoe. But no harm
was done, for she was righted again and finished the
circumnavigation. Each night we slept out in our
respective boats, and Uncle Ned proved himself a
master-cook, particularly with boiled chicken and rice
stewed up with a species of curry sauce. This black
man watched over me as though I had been his baby,
and over a camp-fire, on the edge of a coral reef, he
gave vent to his aspirations, which were to be an Eng-
lishman under the Stars and Stripes. As to the de-
tails of this proposition, he was not particular — his
political philosophy went no further than observing
that English and Americans spoke the same language,
had money to spend, and gave the negro, on the whole,
a pretty good time. As to the Dane, Uncle Ned bore
him no ill-will, but, from his point of view, the Anglo-
Saxon brought prosperity.

My cruise was instructive in so far as it proved, at
least to my own satisfaction, the very small impression
produced in this place by a government representing
one of the most vigorous branches of the European
family.

Denmark has been for many years ready to sell
this island to the United States, and at one time
(1870) General Grant had arranged the purchase for
$7,000,000. The Danish King published a pathetic
farewell address to his loyal and dearly beloved sub-
jects in the West Indies. The bargain was on the
point of being consummated, and the loyal subjects
had become scandalously jubilant over the prospect
of ceasing to be Danish, when the American Senate
[ 186 ]

THE SCANDINAVIAN COLONIST

refused consent, and the West Indian blacks who had
bought American flags furled them up against a bet-
ter day.

Let us recall also that two centuries ago the Great
Elector of Brandenburg, whose descendant now oc-
cupies the Imperial Throne of Germany, colonized St.
Thomas. Of this occupation I could find no visible
trace in 1890.

The Danish Government has not succeeded in the
West Indies — it has made its colonial experiment, and
is now quite willing that others should take over the
unprofitable venture. Had she many islands like Eng-
land, things might have turned out better, for the cost
of administration would not have been relatively so
heavy. Many of England's islands are unprofitable,
but she has so many successful ones that she can afford
a few failures. Her operations may be compared to
those of a great steamship company which can afford
to have a wreck now and then and treat her losses
with equanimity. Denmark is in the position of a ship-
ping firm with but one or two vessels — the loss of one
means almost ruin.

From a commercial point of view it is desirable that
all the West Indian islands be under one flag. The
territories are so small, that one governor and staff
could do the work now laid upon several. A judge
to-day could hold court in several islands, whore in
past times the absence of steam would have made such
an operation difficult — not to say dangerous. It is
England which to-day gives the most satisfactory
government in llic West Indies, and, speaking purely
from the stand-point of jjolitical economy, it is rcason-

I >«7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

able to think that the colonists of the French, Dutch,
Danish, and Swedish West Indies would be better off,
as planters and merchants, for a change to the Union
Jack. Aside from England, the French islands of
Martinique and Guadeloupe are the only ones in which
the home government has made a deep impression by
means of religion and language, but not so deep but
that the colonists would very soon be satisfied with
an administration that cost them less money, guaran-
teed them local liberty in the way of language and re-
ligion, and, better than all, promised them a better
market for their produce.

Since the abolition of slavery and the adoption of
free trade in England, the English West Indies have
not been prosperous — indeed many plantations have
been abandoned completely. No doubt the past gen-
eration of planters grew up with bad business methods
— they expected that sugar would always remain high,
they lived too much away from their estates, and no
business can prosper that does not receive personal
attention. The price of sugar went down, and there
was not on hand a breed of planters qualified to meet
the new economic situation created by bounties to
beet-root sugar on the continent of Europe. The es-
tates were mortgaged — new machinery was not used,
and planters trusted to a change of luck rather than
to their own efiforts.

Then to aggravate a situation already bad enough,
the official administration was very costly — even
though efficient. A little West India island with no
more territory than a big farm and no revenue worth
mentioning, was weighted with an official stafT that
[ i88 ]

THE SCANDINAVIAN COLONIST

would have sufficed for an East Indian state as large
as France — and equally populous.

Little impoverished islands persisted in living as
though they expected each day a restoration of their
pristine importance. They had lost much of their com-
mercial as well as their strategic value in the eyes of
the mother-country, and were, consequently, regarded
as merely tiresome when they persisted in complaints
for redress. The British press was too busy chroni-
cling progress at the Antipodes in Africa and India
to give much time to a question that was very compli-
cated, and promised to excite very little public interest.

And so it happens that the British West Indies to-
day look less to London for prosperity, and more to
New York. What the Briton wants is liberty and self-
government. He will take a plantation in Sumatra
or a ranch in Texas, so long as his rights are respected
and there are prospects of doing well. So far as the
West Indies are concerned, he will settle in Cuba as
cheerfully as in Jamaica. No man moves his domicile
so easily as does the Anglo-Saxon — and no man holds
so tightly to his nationality. If the Anglo-Saxon
drifts readily to the British flag, it is because that flag-
represents liberty and good government. He settles
under other flags whenever they promise him equal
advantages.

i8<)

XVIII

SOME NOTES FROM THE DANISH WEST
INDIES MADE IN SANTA CRUZ

" We {the United States) could not view an interposition for
oppressing them {the Spanish- American Republics') or controlling in
any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other
light than as a manifestation of an utfriendly disposition towards the
United States. . . . The American continents should no longer
be subjects for any new European colonial settlements.^'' [Presi-
dent Monroe, 1822.]

Influence of English Language — A Successful Planter — How to
Treat the Blacks

ON the night of February 9, 1889. after a day
in St. Thomas, I jumped into my canoe Carib-
hee and paddled off to a rakish-looking fore-
and-aft schooner of forty-nine tons bound for Santa
Cruz, another Danish island. The night was lighted
by brilliant stars. The moon, young but precocious,
like most things in the tropics, shone upon the well-
flattened sails of the schooner as strongly as would
a full-grown moon in our less luxuriant north.

The rakish-looking craft was the Vigilant — famous
not merely by reason of her great age, but as having
achieved renown in the various roles of pirate, pri-
vateer, slaver, man-of-war, and lastly, mail packet.
Although it was recorded that she was built in Bal-
timore in 1790, she is to-day one of the fastest boats
[ 190 ]

NOTES FROM DANISH WEST INDIES

of her sire in these waters, making her forty-mile run
from port to port usually in four hours, and with the
punctuality of a steamer. She is of great beam, and
illustrates how the principles governing ship-building
in the last century differed, in the United States, but
little from those of to-day. On remarking to the
negro captain upon the perfect manner in which his
sails set, he told me that they were of cotton and made
in New York. This Vigilant is much of a pet in Carib-
bean waters, and her captain is as proud of his Httle
craft as any North Atlantic skipper of his 18,000
tonner. Before I had been an hour on board pas-
sengers and crew had laid before me the fullest evi-
dence, direct and circumstantial, touching the polit-
ical, social, and historical value of the Vigilant. The
Danish Governor always travelled in her when visiting
Santa Cruz, and occupied usually the middle " Dog
House " on the starboard side. Lest it be assumed
that kennels are here substituted for cabins, let me
explain that the term " Dog House " is applied to
a species of chicken-coop about six feet long, thirty
inches wide and thirty-six inches high, in which the
most favored of the passengers spend the night. These
sleeping-boxes arc lashed securely to the poop rail,
and form six sleeping compartments of the most desir-
able kind, owing to the ventilation secured by means
of lattice work, which faces, of course, away from the
rail. The schooner provides a mattress, two little pil-
lows, and a sheet; passengers are not expected to un-
dress l)eyond slijjping off their shoes and coat, the
latter being then thnnvn about the .shoulders. Lying
thus in a " Dog liou.sc," as in a palan(|uin, one can
chat with tlu- capt.iiii milil sleep comes, oi' bi- enter-

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

tained by observing how the vessel is worked, for the
sliding doors can be opened to such an extent as to
give one the feeling of sleeping on the deck, protected
by a wooden canopy on three sides.

In 1825 the J^'igilant first took her place in history.
It seems that the Danish Government had despatched
a war-vessel to hunt down a Spanish pirate who made
a business of cruising between St. Thomas and Porto
Rico, much to the discouragement of honest sailors
trading in these waters. But the clumsy Danish war-
rior was too big and too slow to follow the Spaniard
in the intricate channels and over the shallows which
the pirate knew by heart, and people began to lose
faith in the power of the Danish Navy to protect them.
In this hour of darkness, however, as on most occa-
sions of the same kind, a young deliverer sprang up
in the shape of a gallant Danish of^cer, who submitted
a scheme for beating this Spanish freebooter at his
own game. Picking out thirty men with a taste for
the sport, he sailed away from Santa Cruz with this
same little forty-nine-tonner, and in a few hours
sighted the pirate. The Vigilant was, of course, mis-
taken for a merchantman, as she sailed along the
mountainous shores of St. Thomas, keeping her crew
well out of sight, and raising in the Spaniard's mind
the prospect of a short and easy struggle. Local his-
tory says that when the pirate ran alongside and
her crew were in the act of boarding, the gallant Norse-
men sprang up as one man and delivered a volley so
galling that the enemy was demoralized and routed,
with slaughter so great that the Spanish deck ran with
blood for several minutes after the fight was done.

From this time on the Vigilant has never ceased to
[ 192 ]

NOTES FROM DANISH WEST INDIES

be highly respectable, and has entwined herself to such
a degree in the affections of the people, that when, in
1876, she disappeared in eleven fathoms of water by
reason of a hurricane, nothing would do but have her
fished up and once more sent shuttling up and down
between St. Thomas and Santa Cruz — a journey she
makes so regularly and methodically as to give rise to
a plausible superstition, that she finds her own way
over the intervening forty miles without compass,
chart, or rudder, and that she would speedily pass into
dissolution should any irreverent owner seek to force
her to run elsewhere than on her present route.

My fare between the two islands was $2.50, or ten
shillings, which included the use of one of the dog
houses. Even at this price I am told that the packet
would not pay expenses but for a government mail
subsidy. In addition to the fare, each passenger is
forced to get a passport at a charge of thirty-two
cents, a strange rule when it is remembered that both
islands are under the same governor.

At nine o'clock of the morning following my arrival
in Christianstaedt, I took my seat in the " Royal Dan-
ish Mail Coach," for a ride of about twelve miles, to
visit my Scotch friend.

The custom-house flanked one side of the square
from which wc started. Close to this was a miniature
fortress j)ainted pink, opposite to which was the Carib-
bean Sea. To get my ticket for the mail I went be-
fore a flaxcn-haircd Danish official, who pocketed a
dollar, and in return stamped me a piece of cardboard
entitling me to a scat. Of the West Indies no islands
can show cleaner towns, more polite negroes, or bet-
ter evidences of g(jod gwvcnnncnt than those of Den-
I I'M I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

mark. Despotism is the rule, but it is the despotism
of a gentle master rather than that of an " overseer."
Its laws read as though conceived in the dark ages,
but being applied with intelligence and promptness,
they excite little dissatisfaction. Responsibilities are
laid upon planters, such as inspecting highways, pre-
venting smuggling, taking a part in legislation, bur-
dens not only heavy in themselves, but carrying penal-
ties with them if neglected; yet my Scotch friend, who
had lived here thirty-three years, defended the laws
most stoutly as being the foundation of what pros-
perity they enjoyed.

He is full of energy and good sense. He applies to
his planting principles common in other industrial
pursuits, and consequently has little fault to find.
Every other year he makes a run to Europe for seven
or eight months, by this means invigorating both
body and mind, so as to resist the efifect which per-
petual summer is apt to have upon even the strongest
constitutions. He is reputed rich, his estate bears at
least evidence that he is not in need of capital; he
understands his people, and they in turn bear good-
will in their eyes when they see him; he understands
thoroughly the laws under which he lives and accepts
with cheerfulness the varied duties which the Danish
Government forces upon him. Especially does he se-
lect for praise the statute which places a heavy tax,
some $700 a year, I think, upon those who attempt to
play the role of absentee landlord. Much of the pros-
perity of Santa Cruz my friend traced to the fact that
the estates are blessed with the presence of those who
own them; that these owners are not able to foist their
local responsibilities upon mercenary agents; that the

[ 194 ]

NOTES FROM DANISH WEST INDIES

negroes are in daily contact with the men most deeply
concerned in the welfare of the island, and conse-
quently less apt to suffer from neglect or harshness.
To this absentee law my Scotch friend attributed the
fact that no other of the West Indies could show so
healthy a state of feeling between black and white as
Santa Cruz.

The negro, thought my friend, must not be bullied,
neither must he be given a free rein. You must have
your orders strictly carried out, but, on the other
hand, you must be considerate in framing these orders.
When the black mother is nursing her child, and the
father has a sore foot, then is the time to visit them
and show kindly feeling. The negro cares less for
money than the white man, but attaches greater im-
portance to sentiment.

The Royal Danish Mail Coach had its of^cial char-
acter stamped behind in Scandinavian script, and be-
fore starting the mail-bags were carefully locked into
the rear box by a fair-haired officer of the Government.
A few limp-looking soldiers belonging to the pink
fort across the way, continued to throw over the scene
a suggestion of Danish rule in the Caribbean Sea,
which suggestion might easily have been strength-
ened by the presence of a Danish uniform on the box
seat. But our driver was not even a Dane; worse than
that, he could speak not a word of vScandinavian, was
black as tar, and looked as though just from a Caro-
lina cotton-ficld.

With a crack of his long-lashed " bull-w hacker," our
vehicle left the pretty s(|iiare; and llaxi'u soldiers, ofli-
cials, i)iiik fori, and ihc vision of I )fiiiii;u"K' imincili-
ately faded along with I hem. ( )nr " Royal Mail " was

L '% ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

a Yankee " rockaway " country wagon; our team was
made up of one little mule and one horse to match;
no one that we met spoke anything but English; the
currency was dollars and cents; the plantations that
we passed were for the most part owned by English,
Irish, and Scotch, and the local names had little in
them to suggest any but British or American owner-
ship.

Our black driver of the Royal Postwagon told me
about the general riot in 1878, in which the blacks
gutted the towns and burnt most of the plantations —
not, so far as I could gather, from any conspiracy,
but rather from a universal feeling of being unjustly
treated, which needed only a little rum, a little mob,
and a little talk, to develop into a little riot for whose
suppression the little Danish garrison proved totally
inadequate.

This riot was the legitimate outgrowth of one in
1848, which ran its course much in the same way and
marks the year in which slavery was abolished in the
Danish West Indies. The abolition of slavery, how-
ever, did little for the comfort of the blacks, for the law
compelled them to work for ten cents a day and to
remain under yearly contracts at that rate on their
respective estates. They had some of the appearance
of making their own bargains, but, practically, were
little better off than before, although the estates
furnished them privileges that represented more than
their wages, such as free hospital service, the right to
keep pigs, chickens, and cows at the expense of their
employer, the right to cut cane for themselves, as well
as some much-prized rum and cane-juice. Added to
[ 196 ]

NOTES FROM DANISH WEST INDIES

this the old people were looked after so long as they
lived.

The riots of 1848 abolished slavery in name; in
1878 the riots led to the abolition of fixed rates of
pay and annual contract, leaving the negro free to
sell his labor in the highest market, and, on the other
hand, releasing the employer from many expensive
burdens which formerly accompanied the forced-ser-
vice system. To-day the negro can claim no wages,
he must take what is offered, and the employer, on the
other hand, is freed from the necessity of providing
what may be called " Extras " for his hands. The
whites in 1878 thought they were ruined. The blacks
thought the day of jubilee had come. It soon tran-
spired that the planters had joined in a labor " pool,"
binding themselves to pay but twenty cents a day;
and the blacks wakened from their riotous debauch
to find that while their wages seemed larger in coin,
they were smaller when measured by the comforts
procured by a day of labor.

My Scotch friend was wise as well as energetic, and
while he paid, of course, only the wages agreed upon
by the Planters' Union, he managed to secure at the
hands of his black workingmen and women, good
work cheerfully performed. And the reasons were —
first, he looked after them well, saw that their cabins
did not leak, and that tlicir little grievances were
promptly attended to. Secondly, he allowed them lit-
tle indulgences in iIk- line of sugar-juice, rum, free
pasture, right oi trading, etc., so that the wages on his
plantation represented, according to his calculation,
a trifle over thirty cents a day,

I 107 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

The negro needs guidance, for he is an imitator; he
needs sympathy, for he lacks the power to stand alone,
and, like most children, he needs at times parental
correction to remind him that authority is lodged in
superior intelligence. Unite these forces, as in Santa
Cruz, and you have a black population in whose midst
the white man can enjoy life. On the other hand,
throw them over to a caricature of parliamentary gov-
ernment as in Hayti, and you produce a black people
not pleasing to any well-wisher of the race.

I saw in town here a document which suggests that
the blacks of bygone days must have been " hard
cases," indeed, if the laws touching their punishment
bear any relation to their disposition to sin. In 1733
a placard was issued by the Royal Council affecting
Danish islands, from which I copied these provisions:

1. The leader of runaway slaves shall be pinched
three times with red-hot iron, and then hung.

2. Each other runaway slave shall lose one leg, or if
the owner pardon him, shall lose one ear, and receive
one hundred and fifty stripes.

3. Any slave being aware of the intention of others
to run away and not giving information, shall be
burned in the forehead and receive one hundred
stripes. . . .

9. One white person shall be sufificient witness
against a slave; and if a slave be suspected of a crime,
he can be tried by torture . . . etc.

The mild rule under which the Santa Cruz blacks

now earn their thirty cents a day, may lead them to

look upon such provisions of law as intended merely to

frighten, never to be put into execution; and let us

[ 198 ]

NOTES FROM DANISH WEST INDIES

hope that these bloody laws were never called into
use. But such as they are, they illustrate here, as
similar ones did in the Southern States of North
America, what brutal instincts are aroused by such an
institution as slavery. And all the more striking is
this illustration when we remember that the men who
made these cruel ordinances were descended from the
liberty-loving Norsemen, the men who planted the
seed of self-government in every country that now
enjoys its blessings. A young Danish physician
named Isert, who visited Santa Cruz in 1787, tells in
his diary how a slave belonging to a neighbor had
broken some article of household use; that to punish
him for this offence his mistress ordered him stripped
naked and hung up by his wrists to a nail. She then
took a needle, and for the space of one hour amused
herself by slowly passing it in and out of all parts of
his flesh, while the poor devil shrieked until the neigh-
borhood could no longer endure the sound, and the
tigress was by them induced to give up her sport.

What Isert saw in Santa Cruz in the nature of
cruelty to slaves surpasses anything in " Uncle Tom's
Cabin," and must have made his book very unwelcome
to the planters of that island. He tells of slaves that
were flogged until their flesh broke, when the wounds
would be rubbed with pepper and salt, leaving behind
them pains as cnrluring as they were acute, and scars
that went with thcni to llicir last day on earth.*

•Governor Iverson was tlie first rc[)rcscnf!itivc of D.-inish .luthority in
fliuse islands. In l')72, the year lie arrived, he issued rules for the
ynwi-ruinful of his islaniis that leave no doubt as to his ideas of per-
sonal autliorily and acconnlaliility. I'-vcn then, there was ihe little pink
fort to which all came who wanted a passport. The fine for leaving the

I I')'; I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

On reaching the half-way point of our journey, a
shady spot, we handed our team to a cheery black
hostler, who in return gave us his fresh pair. On again
we went, the bull-whacker cracking about the little
beasts as it probably cracked fifty years ago about the
father of the present driver. It is on this account,
perhaps, that negroes show such delight in cracking
whips, even when no animal is in sight. In Antigua
I noticed that the old negress who acted as overseer
to a party of black girls in the field carried in her
hand a long lash fastened to a handle as long as one's
arm. She vociferated energetically, urged them to
their work by loud threats and wordy encouragement
— acted at times to me as though she meant to lay the
lash across the backs of one of her people — but the
owner of the plantation assured me that her lash was
regarded by herself and her co-workers as merely em-
blematic of office.

My twelve miles seemed short, and in due time I
was deposited with my luggage at a cross road where
my friend's Yankee buggy awaited me, for the mile
or so to his house. The road through the length of
Santa Cruz, that is to say, fifteen miles, is macadam-
ized, of good width and sheltered by a succession of

island then was five hundred pounds of tobacco, and the man who
assisted the fugitive was made responsible for all his debts. But Iverson
was, for all that, a God-fearing man, for he ordered all his Danish sub-
jects, under penalty of twenty-five pounds of tobacco, to attend divine
worship, in the little pink fort, every Sunday morning ; nor did he ex-
cept foreigners, for they suffered the same penalty if they did not turn
up at the afternoon service.

In those days every householder was bound, on a penalty of one hun-
dred pounds of tobacco, to "keep in his house, for himself and every
man in his service, a sword with a belt, and a gun with sufficient powder
and ball."

[ 200 ]

NOTES FROM DANISH WEST INDIES

graceful cocoa-nut trees whose tops wave in the trade-
wind as though fanning the traveller below. From
this main road, a smaller but equally well-laid one
led through field after field of tall rich sugar-cane, to
Litchfield plantation. When I first saw the cane, I
was reminded of Indian corn (maize), the cane being,
however, more luxuriant in foliage. Each in its way
is the noblest product of its respective latitude, and
neither, I am sure, can feel hurt at the family resem-
blance to which I refer.

My Scotch friend received me at the steps and led
me into the broad hall-way of his home, through which
one looked to the south over the Caribbean Sea, and
to the northward toward the volcanic peaks that face
the Atlantic. Through all the rooms of the house
passed the air in gentle circulation, giving refreshing
sleep at night, that blessing which makes any heat by
day supportable. Life on a plantation is comparatively
dull save to one interested in the working of it, and the
fields of cane which to my friend were books full of
thrilling stories, to me represented little beyond a
pleasant patch of healthy-looking green. We rode
about his acres, inspected his boiling vats, saw the cane
crushed, watched the juice pour out, felt the heat of
the boiler fires, admired the cleanliness of the machin-
ery, and made the round of the negro cabins.

As vvc rode over n jjiecc of pasture-land, I was struck
by two brilliant plants that roared their heads about
eighteen inches from the ground, bearing flowers of
lemon and crimson color. All about tliein the grass
had been closely cropped by the browsing animals,
who, however, seemed to know by instinct that these

( 201 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

plants were not to be disturbed. " The negroes know
it well," said my friend, " for they are good hands at
poisoning." Then he called out to a passing laborer
to tell him the name of that flower. The man promptly
said " Bechuana," adding that I must not touch it. It
was the deadly ipecacuanha which I subsequently no-
ticed in St. Thomas.

The Dominican missionary, Labat, writing in 1699
from the islands, tells the following to illustrate the
negroes' familiarity with the art of poisoning — a tale
which is capped by some recounted by Canon Kings-
ley from Trinidad.

A slave belonging to a neighbor of the priest, when
on his death-bed asked for his master in order to con-
fess to him that he had poisoned some thirty of his
fellow blacks, and in this way. One of his nails he al-
lowed to grow longer than the others, and under this
one he secreted the juice of a poisonous plant, which
was done by simply scratching it with his nail. Then
he invited his victim to drink a glass of rum with him,
the first glass of which went well enough. When he
filled his glass the second time, however, he held the
poisoned nail in the tumbler suf^ciently deep to allow
the liquor to be permeated with it, and gave this to
the unsuspecting guest, who in less than two hours
from the time of drinking died in horrible convulsions.
Labat declined to name the plant whose efifect was
so deadly, though he made experiments with it that
satisfied him of its power — no doubt this same ipe-
cacuanha.

The little town of Frederikstaedt, at the western end
of the island, had little beyond the name to suggest
[ 202 ]

NOTES FROM DANISH WEST INDIES

the country to which it owed allegiance — and very-
much to proclaim it as belonging to England or the
United States. American paper dollars passed cur-
rent; our purchases in the market were at the rate of
so many cents, not so many krone or gulden; the
vehicles that scurried about were from New England;
the horses might have come straight from Texas, so
much were they like mustangs; the shops appeared to
have been supplied from London. The one hotel in
the place was in its interior economy the counterpart
of what one might have found in any small town in
Canada. The inhabitants — negroes, of course, for of
whites there were so few as to be hardly worth men-
tioning — might have been picked up in Louisiana or
Georgia, dress and all; and their houses had little to
distinguish them from what their black brethren in the
States would have built.

Many of the houses were of solid masonry, after a
fashion common in Spanish America and the tropics
generally, looking cool in the hottest days by reason
of the free play given to air and the ample shade be-
neath their picturesque arches. A squad or tw^o of
fresh-faced Scandinavian soldiers garrisoned the fort
of Frederikstaedt, high-checked, heallhy-looking boys,
some of whom were digging in the garrison garden
as we strolled by; suggesting, however, the inmates of
a besieged enclosure rather than soldiers in control of
a colony. The black policemen wore Danish helmets,
but their speech was English, while the occasional
official notices that ran in the name of the King of
Denmark, were in English! The negroes talk only
I'jiglish.

[ 203 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

The women of Santa Cruz are like antique god-
desses of Ethiopia. They march along the highway
with a freedom of step, a grace of poise, an elasticity
and erectness of carriage, a dignity of presence that
makes one stop and wonder if there can be many of
this heroic build. Our feeble products of super-civili-
zation would see in these artless children of the tropics
a beauty unobstructed by interference of vulgar fash-
ion. Their feet are bare and their Hght skirts are lifted
to a point slightly above their knees by tucking them,
as did the Spartan girls of old, deftly up into the zone
that encircles the body. Shapelier feet and ankles
were never seen than those that carried these breezy
ebony maidens, their skirts swinging merrily about
them as they sang their way to town carrying on their
heads pretty baskets filled with fruit. The carrying of
weights on the head operates for these daughters of
the new world as for those of Italy. It accustoms them
to hold their heads well; to throw their shoulders
back; to expand their chest; to carry their spinal
forces perpendicularly, and to attain that which ath-
letes acquire only by patient training — the art of walk-
ing from the hips. Their life is naturally an out-door
one; the cost of their clothing for a year is probably
less than a few pairs of gloves for one of our girls;
their head-dress is the picturesque bandanna; they
happily don't appear to know what corsets are meant
for, and consequently they furnish to-day a picture of
health, fine lines of figure, and general appearance of
" style," that could not be matched in Mayfair,
though the winsome ladies of Tokio approach them
in grace of carriage.

[ 204 ]

XIX

THE CHINAMAN AS COLONIST

' * yls the only people {the Chinese^ who remain effective and am-
bitious in tropical climes we need their help in our new (^colonial')
undertaking, but we also need great caution in handling and guid-
ing them.^^ — Professor Williams of Yale, "The Problem
of Chinese Immigration in Farther Asia. " Washington, 1900.

His Increase in the United States and Australia — Singapore — Hong
Kong — Industrial Value

THE national flag of China is rarely if ever dis-
played in the ports of the white man or even
his colonies. Yet it is hard to name a country
wherein the Chinaman is not profitably engaged in a
variety of occupations ranging from a wash-tub to a
banking-house. Hong-Kong, which was but a pesti-
lential desert when England first occupied it (1841),
is now one of the half dozen great seaports of the
world, so crowded with Chinese that a large share of
the population drips over the sea-wall into thousands
of sampans (small native boats).

Singapore, another island which England occupied
only eighty years ago, as a part of the Malay Peninsula,
has attracted a teeming Chinese population, which has
not merely asserted its superiority over the native of
East India, but is competing successfully with mer-
chants of our race. Such has been llic stimulating cf-

f 205 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

feet of British administration that the Chinaman, who
in Peking and Canton conceals his wealth, makes such
a display of it in Singapore and Hong-Kong as to
astonish new arrivals. It is no uncommon thing at
Singapore to meet on the Drive Chinese merchants,
taking their evening airing in perfectly appointed Eu-
ropean carriages, drawn by costly and well-harnessed
horses, and with coachmen and footmen in livery on
the box. The same men would in their own country
crouch in the back of a springless two-wheeled cart
and simulate poverty. In Java and the Philippines,
though Dutch and Spaniards have passed successive
laws discouraging to Chinese settlement, neither gov-
ernment has more than temporarily checked emigra-
tion from the Celestial Empire. In Batavia, as in
Manila, Chinese competition affects nearly every
branch of human industry, from day labor in the plan-
tation to the chartering of freight steamers.

The United States has not legislated liberally for
the Chinese, and therefore the development of the
Philippines will probably remain less satisfactory than
that of corresponding English territory in those
regions.

Throughout the East Indies and the hundreds of
islands north of Australia, between the Indian Ocean
and the shores of South America, the Chinese are
spreading themselves in proportion as they are not for-
bidden by superior force. Like the Jews, they show
good or bad qualities according to the administration
of the country they select. It is no mere accident that
the best type of Jew is to be found in England and the
vilest in Russia. Did we take advantage of this warn-
[ 206 ]

THE CHINAMAN AS COLONIST

ing, Manila would soon attract as good Chinamen as
Singapore, and San Francisco would have as respect-
able a Chinese quarter as Hong-Kong.

Australia shares with the United States — in part,
at least — a frank hostility to Chinese immigration, al-
though neither country can execute its own laws on
the subject to their full extent.

The Chinaman has a quality which makes him in
many respects the best colonist in the world. I refer
to his extraordinary capacity to endure extremes of
heat and cold.

When the Pei-ho River is frozen tight and Euro-
pean gun-boats are locked fast at Tien-tsin ; when the
north wind from across the MongoHan Desert pro-
duces a temperature suggesting that of Dakota in
January; when all who can do so wrap themselves in
furs, and the long camel-trains from beyond the Great
Wall move like a mass of frosted figures — throughout
such winters the Chinese coolie, in his cotton quilting,
labors from morning until night, or squats in the street
beside his little stall, making no more of his Siberian
winter than the Russian moujik in his coat of sheep-
skin.

The Chinaman on the Canton River under a tropi-
cal sun astonishes the white sailor by labor so ener-
getic and so persistent as to appear incredible in any
human creature. Summer and winter, near the ecjua-
tor or the arctic circle, all weathers seem alike to the
Chinaman. I liave seen llicm in July and August at
Singaj)cjrc and I long-Kong, and in the winter season
in Canada and Corca, in South America at the mouth
of the ()rinoc(J and in I lie Ivcd Sea in tlu- slokc-hole

I ^'o; I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

of a mail-steamer. Where the white man shrivels up
with the cold or turns limp with the heat, John
Chinaman jogs along with a big load on his back,
crooning a sort of a sing-song and wondering why
other people do not take life easily. On my first
journey from Hong-Kong to San Francisco, in 1876,
our ship carried 2,000 Chinamen, and the captain
assured me that they were cleaner in their personal
habits, gave him infinitely less trouble, than twenty
Irishmen. In 1898 we had a deck load of some
1,500 Chinese returning from Singapore to Hong-
Kong, and so clean and quiet were they that their
existence was hardly suspected by the white passen-
gers on the upper deck. They did their own cook-
ing in their own way, slept on their mats, kept the
decks scrupulously clean, and did not quarrel. I am
inclined to think that these passengers in three days
did not dirty the ship so much as would have done
steerage passengers from Queenstown in half an hour.
In that same year one of the splendid ships of the
" Empress " Line, which carried me from Yokohama
to Vancouver, had about 1,000 Chinese forward, and
these were, according to law, fumigated on arrival in
Canada. It was a ridiculous precaution in the opinion
of the captain as well as of those who knew the
Chinese. If any fumigation of emigrants were justified,
it was not on the Pacific Slope, but in New York or
Montreal — against our fellow Christians!

In the United States we have found the Chinaman
an industrial blessing — nay, an industrial necessity.
In the construction of our first railway, joining At-
lantic and Pacific, he came under contract to work
[ 208 ]

THE CHINAMAN AS COLONIST

as a coolie in shovelling dirt and lifting rails and
sleepers. It was expected that on the completion of
his term he would disappear along with the caboose
of the construction train. But we miscalculated com-
pletely the intelligence of our guest, and in a few years
the mining camps of California were enriched by a
new race whose prosperity in American soil was
checked only by occasional mob violence. Often have
I seen in the California of twenty-five years ago the
Chinaman working over diggings which white men
regarded as exhausted. They grew rich by working
at occupations which seemed undignified to the new-
ly arrived emigrant from Ireland. Officers of the
United States Army stationed in our remote terri-
tories have assured me that they would have had to
do their own house-work but for John Chinaman.
He occupied the ground which no other emigrant
could occupy so well — turning his hand to raising
vegetables, waiting at table, cooking the dinner, or
taking the baby out for an airing.

But the political influence of San Francisco labor
unions was strong enough to get a law passed exclud-
ing the Chinese from the United States, or, at least,
preventing any more from coming in.

Thanks, however, to the laxity of our frontier offi-
cials, the Chinese have trickled in over the 3.000 miles
of northern frontier so successfully that to-day there
is hardly a hamlet in the United States where one or
more Chinamen are not earning a competency — at
least at the wash-tub. Here is a colonization less than
half a century old, vigorously discouraged by the Gov-
ernment of the United States and wlu)lly unsupported

\ 2(K> ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

by the home government, proceeding silently, stead-
ily, and irresistibly upon a career of industrial con-
quest, the extent of which is practically the whole
earth. There are Chinamen in the West Indies and
in South America, as well as in Canada and the United
States. On the Pacific they man English and Ameri-
can steamships from the steward's pantry to the stoke-
hole. The North German Lloyd carries a fully
equipped Chinese laundry from Bremen to Shanghai,
as well as shifts of Chinese firemen. They would carry
Chinese stewards as well did they not fear political op-
position in Parhament instigated by the trade unions.

During the battle of Manila Bay the Chinamen who
served under Admiral Dewey as firemen, stewards,
etc., showed as much fighting zeal and courage as any
blue jacket could wish. An American officer, who had
some Chinamen under him employed during the bat-
tle in passing ammunition, told me these kept con-
stantly exposing themselves in their eagerness to
know how the fight was going on. They would keep
popping up from below, shout out to the men at the
guns: "Give them Hell, boys!" then disappear like
prairie dogs, after more ammunition. Their zeal was
no doubt stimulated by the fond anticipation that
American administration in the Philippines would be
more favorable to them than that of Spain.

The Chinaman is colonizing the world in the sense
that the German has done so — he is the only man who
appears to love work for its own sake.

The Chinaman resembles the German in his capac-
ity to leave his country without worrying much in re-
gard to religious observances. The Irish colonist's

[ 2IO ]

THE CHINAMAN AS COLONIST

first question is, how near the Roman Catholic Church
may be. The Chinaman and the German care very ht-
tle whether there is any church in the neighborhood
— they don't even care much as to who is president or
king.

In the summer of 1900 the streets of New York
echoed to the howhngs of a mob of white men who
seized inoffensive negroes, beat them brutally, and in
some instances left them for dead on the pavement.
Such an outbreak is the manifestation of a race hatred
which requires but a flimsy excuse to demonstrate that
the equality of black and white is, in the United States
at least, not a popular doctrine in all parts of the coun-
try. We have ourselves raised the negro question by
declaring the black man equal to the white in political
rights. The Chinaman we exclude completely from
citizenship. There would be more sense in recogniz-
ing the Chinaman as our equal than the negro. But
neither would be wise, or even expedient.

The Chinaman we have hitherto looked upon as a
stranger who would soon return to his own country;
whom we could, therefore, afford to ignore politically.
Having no vote, our politicians have not bothered
themselves on his behalf, and, having no political
friends in the country, the mobs have felt that they
could assault him with impunity. But mobs and polit-
ical disabilities have alike failed to discourage him, and
he is now an imijortant economic element in the
United States.

So far he has .sliown himself but timidly, and has
but in few instances reared his head as an organizer
of labor. On the Pacific Coast he figures extensively

[ 211 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

in farming, and it is to him that California mainly owes
her commanding position as a fruit producer.

In the near future we shall no doubt see him spread-
ing over the plantations of the Southern States;
cultivating the bottom-lands of our Gulf States; re-
viving agriculture in Mississippi and South Carolina;
acquiring large estates; beating the negro at his own
work, and, ultimately, making a New South of indus-
trial and political security.

We have hitherto thought that negroes only could
cultivate the bottom-lands of our Gulf States — we
shall discover that the Chinaman can do so on better
terms; that, though we may pay him more per day,
we shall get a reward from his labor that will amply
cover the increased outlay. In Natal, on the occasion
of my visit, some 40,000 natives of India were engaged
upon the sugar plantations. That was indeed carrying
coals to Newcastle — to bring to the habitat of the
negro, men of another race to work in the tropical sun
on the low lands about Durban. Yet the Natal plant-
ers cheerfully paid the cost, because experience had
taught them that they could not depend upon the
negro for steady work — at least not under the polit-
ical freedom and the other conditions prevailing in
South Africa.

On a small island like Santa Cruz or Barbados in
the West Indies, the negro who takes a contract to
work for a specified term can be compelled to fulfil
that contract, because there is nowhere near to which
he can run away and support himself in idleness. The
police w^ould soon bring back a defaulting negro in
such an island. But in Natal, the Kaffir who is tired
[ 212 I

THE CHINAMAN AS COLONIST

of work, slips off in a night and the next day is among
his own people in Zululand, and can kick his heels in
the sun while his wives pick bananas for him and get
his dinner ready. In the United States we have no
legal machinery by which a negro can be compelled to
carry out a labor contract effectively; and, conse-
quently, planting is not an ideal occupation for him
who has to advance capital in an enterprise which at
any moment may be seriously affected by a holiday —
and his black workmen may select the harvest time for
this recreation!

The Chinaman has the great merit of being indif-
ferent to holidays, as he is to heat and cold. If he
makes you a promise you may be sure that he will keep
it. The manager of the Hong-Kong and Shanghai
Bank told me that on the Chinese coast he employed
hundreds of Chinese who had ample opportunity for
defrauding him if they chose, but that the idea of loss
through Chinese dishonesty never entered his head
or the head of any other white merchant. The Chi-
nese have the notion of commercial honesty highly de-
veloped, and local companies are found who will in-
sure you against all manner of dishonesty, from that
of a scullery-boy to the irregularity of a bank cashier.
If a Chinaman gives you his word on a bargain you
may count upon him, even though the bargain prove
unprofitable to Jiini. C'ommcrcial honesty may not i)C
the highest form of litnnan honesty, but, such as it is,
it is essentially Chinese.

The negro has no trace of this instinct. He may
promise you solemnly to pick your cotton crop on a
certain day, and at the time he means well by you;

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

but if on the morning of that day some whim calls
him to the town — a dance, a cake-walk, or a picnic
of some kind — the cotton crop may rot for all the
thought he will give it until after he has exhausted
his appetite for pleasure. With a Chinaman that cot-
ton would have been his only thought until the last
flufif had been picked.

So far the Chinaman is known on the Atlantic sea-
board mainly as a laundryman — a day worker. In
Hong-Kong he has, however, already established him-
self as a competitor to the white contractor for manu-
factured articles. He is already building steam-
launches, to say nothing of repairing ships. At Shang-
hai the Chinaman is running steam cotton-mills, and
at Macao I visited a silk-mill entirely peopled by Chi-
nese — men, women, and children. The military neces-
sities of the Chinese Empire are bound to increase the
demand for local mechanics, and familiarity with steam
machinery will, little by little, breed a mechanical class
of laborers, who will threaten our machine shops quite
as much as our laundries. In the interval between
my first and second visit to China (twenty-three years)
many changes had occurred, but almost exclusively
under the shadow of the white man's settlements. It
is not yet clear to what extent the mass of China is
accessible to new ideas. The heads of manufacturing
concerns in China, with whom I talked in 1898, were
unanimous on the subject of the Chinaman as a rival
mechanic. They regarded him as an excellent laborer
under white guidance, but as a feeble creature when
left to himself. The Chinaman is, indeed, too much of
a machine himself ever to be a successful mechanic.
[ 214 ]

THE CHINAMAN AS COLONIST

In America every mechanic worthy of the name is at
the same time an inventor. In China the coolie works
day in and day out, and all his life, without apparently
reflecting upon the possibilities of his machine. To
him all things are of the past — he has not yet come to
regard his work as an opening to the future. In the
dockyards of Hong-Kong the laborers are nearly all
Chinese, and their wages a mere trifle compared to
what an American would be earning on the Delaware;
yet the English manager told me that this labor was
so painfully mechanical, and required so much super-
vision, that its value was thereby much impaired. The
white man got more money because he earned it. If
the Chinese built a man-of-war to-day, the chances are
that they would continue repeating the same type for
the next fifty years, irrespective of any improvements
that might have been made in the interval.

The triumph of Industrial China is a remote con-
tingency. For the moment we have before us a press-
ing question, presented to us by newly acquired colo-
nies. These are tropical countries in which the white
man does not do good field labor, and in which the
work of the black man is far from satisfactory. The
Chinaman can do that work — he is doing correspond-
ing work in British colonics — his work is satisfactory,
and there is every reason for thinking that under
proper restrictions he would jjrove as valuable to Cuba
and Luzon as he has already proved to Singapore and
Hong-Kong.

[ 215 1

OLD FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD

"A churchly and official race could not win America.^' —
WooDROW Wilson, "Colonies and Nations."

Influences which Retarded Colonization in Canada — History of
the Movement — Church and State

EVEN to-day there are few bits of the world
more filled with surprises for the traveller than
Lower Canada. Within a few hours from Bos-
ton or New York, we arrive, on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, in the midst of a peasant population clus-
tered in villages from the midst of each of which rises
the shining tin roof of a Roman Catholic church. In-
stead of the lean Congregational minister hurrying in
his light buggy, we raise our hat to " Monsieur le
Cure," a rotund, genial old gentleman already familiar
to us from the pages of " Evangeline." He travels in
a solid old gig or " caleche," as the Canadians call it;
his horse, a sleek, slow-gaited, much petted animal
who shares with his master strong dislike for Yankee
hurry and restlessness. In quaint old Quebec we put
up at an inn in the Rue de la Montague, where nearly
every detail recalls the shores of Normandy, from the
huge four-poster bed, to the conversation in the cof-
fee-room.

Hence, down the majestic St. Lawrence and up to
[ 216 ]

OLD FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD

the Saguenay to Chicoutimi, we are on the trail of
Frenchmen, very Httle changed in their language,
their religion, or even their customs. When they
move to-day it is still with the priest as their path-
finder, and their social organization bears upon it the
stamp of weakness placed there by Louis XIV.

That monarch was the founder of modern Canada,
thanks to the tact and courage of Champlain,* who,
in 1628, secured a charter which was very liberal, for
those times, of Richelieu and Louis XIIL

Up to this time Canada had attracted to itself merely
a few adventurers who united the profession of arms
with that of traffic with the Indians. A French writer
of the times complained that while Maryland in the
first twenty years of her settlement had attracted 12,-
000 Europeans, Canada in seven corresponding years,
under an earlier charter, had a total population of only
forty.

Yet Canada was a part of the French Crown in 1535,
when a brave sailor of St. Malo, Jacques Cartier, sailed
up the St. Lawrence and claimed for Francis I. the
whole of the western world north of Mexico and
Florida. At that time no English or Dutch interfer-
ence was apprclicndcd, and France was offered an
opportunity vastly eclipsing anything ever offered by
the Pope to Spain and Portugal. But, unfortunately,

* Champlain was born in Krancc in 1567, and died at Quebec in 1635.
Of him r;iri<rnan wrote, in his Pioneers of France: "Samuel de C'hamp-
laiii has been fitly called the l''ather of New I'Vance. In him were
embodied her rcli^jious zeal and romantic sjiirit of adventure. Hcfore
the close of his career, ])tir^^ed of heresy, she took the posture which she
held to the day of hi*r death — in one hand the ('rucilix, in tin- other the
sword. I lis life, full of si^nilicance, is the true be|;innin^ of her event-
ful history."

I -''7 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the religious intolerance of the mother-country, which
manifested itself in the bloody suppression of Protest-
antism, reflected itself in the measure taken for ex-
tending her colonial empire. The noble mind of
Coligny * conceived the idea of opening the land of
the New World to settlement by French refugees from
political or religious persecution; but the Crown
would not entertain any such plan, and, consequently,
the vigorous Frenchmen who should have colonized
Canada found their way ultimately, some to the Cape
of Good Hope, and many more to the Enghsh colonies
in America.

For nearly a century after the acquisition of Canada
( 1 535-1628), Canadian history is superbly romantic,
but colonially barren. France developed a large num-
ber of roving and reckless adventurers — men who had
incurred legal disabihties; who chafed under home
restrictions; whose creditors were pressing; who
thirsted for glory — who possibly hoped for more fav-
orable times should they absent themselves for a few
years — this was the element v^hich carried the French
flag and the missionary cross far into the wilderness,
and captivated the imagination of their compatriots
by a chain of conquest so rapid as to rival that of the
early Portuguese navigators. But it is one thing to
plant sign-boards over the wilderness and quite another

* Admiral Coligny was born in 15 17, and was murdered in Paris in the
presence of the Uuke of Guise in 1572 — the first victim of the St. Bar-
tholomew Massacre. The spirit which produced that horrible butchery
is by no means dead. In Toulouse, a city in the south of France, there
were riots in 1872 because the Republican Government attempted to pre-
vent the citizens from celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of that
disgraceful episode in Roman Catholic history. Paris has a monument
to Coligny ; it is carefully guarded against fanatical violence.

[ 218 ]

OLD FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD

to plant colonies, and that explains why, after more
than two centuries of French occupation, one battle
on the heights of Quebec (1759) wrested this whole
country from France, and turned her over as an addi-
tional asset of the Anglo-Saxon world.

Yet, at the opening of the seventeenth century,
France had, on the maps at least, a larger colonial em-
pire than either England or Holland. She had a splen-
did colonial outfit, so far as priests, soldiers, and sail-
ors were concerned — she lacked only colonists. The
French have ever shown a strong disinclination to
leave their own country, and it is worth noting that the
only people who in those days desired to emigrate were
by law forbidden to do so — for the early charters care-
fully provided that only good Catholics should be tol-
erated in French colonies. Protestants were assumed
to be disloyal to the Government. Thus, the very ele-
ment which was the backbone of England beyond the
ocean, was, by the Crown, forbidden to assist in build-
ing up a French empire in America.

When we reflect upon the excellent results which
the few French colonists did achieve in Canada be-
tween the charter of 1628 and the death of Wolfe in
1759 — that all this was accomplished in spite of a
legislation which excluded the best French element
from Canada — there is good ground for a Frenchman's
thinking that, under a more liberal home government,
French would have become the ruling language from
the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.

Though the past cannot be altered, the lessons of
the past, if taken lo heart by Rc'|)ul)lican JMancc, can
undo much of what is now a drawback to her colonial

[ 219 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

success. Richelieu, in 1628, introduced into Canada
a religious domination, almost as oppressive as what
existed at home, and parcelled the land out to French
noblemen. Naturally, none but the serf-like peasants
would permit themselves to be enrolled in a colonizing
venture of this kind, and it required all the influence of
the Crown, backed by that of the parish priests — to
say nothing of local misery — in order to start the small
stream of emigration whose results we now see on the
lower St. Lawrence. A company which had the Cana-
dian monopoly, engaged itself to send out three hun-
dred colonists in 1628, and 4,000 more within the fol-
lowing fifteen years. Not only were the colonists to
be Catholic, but there were to be at least three mis-
sionaries to every settlement.

The Church, however, not satisfied with minister-
ing to the needs of its parishioners and converting
Indians, immediately appropriated valuable land to
itself, built monasteries and nunneries, and by ex-
acting tithes, saddled the struggling peasants with
still further burdens. From the outset, Canada pre-
sented a picture of feudal aristocracy and religious
domination sustained by the labor of ignorant and in-
dustrious peasants. These had little in common with
the adventurers who explored the great lakes or fought
the Spaniards in the West Indies.

The early years of colonies are of infinite interest to
us for the degree to which they reflect the qualities of
the mother-country, and it is interesting to note how
naturally a colony evolves according to the character of
the first settlers, or of the administration which con-
trolled its origin. We have seen how the Spaniards
[ 220 ]

OLD FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD

crowded to the New World, thirsting merely for wealth
and plunder, building monasteries and cities rather
than establishing plantations; and reflecting through-
out the Spanish Main the official centralization of
Madrid. We have seen the superiority of Brazil grow-
ing out of the happy accident that a handful of refugee
political prisoners and Jews organized self-govern-
ment at a time when popular representation had long
since ceased in the Iberian Peninsula. The rebellious
Dutch and Huguenots of the Cape did more for the
colonial glory of Holland than two centuries of her
Great East India Company, and England's noblest colo-
nial monument was reared not by a Clive or a Warren
Hastings, a Drake or a Raleigh, but by a boat-load of
Puritan rebels who accepted the risks of a settlement
in the wilderness rather than surrender one tittle of
controverted doctrine. We need not then be surprised
if to-day the French in Canada represent the least en-
terprising white element in the northern half of
America. They show still the effects of their early
tutelage. In search of wages they cross the Canadian
border into Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
They drift to the lowest level of the manufacturing
population, along with the Irish and Italians, instead
of to the top with the German, Scandinavian, and
Anglo-Saxon. The great tide of English colonization
has swept up the St. Lawrence, i)ast the monasteries of
the clergy and the castles of i^rmids sciij^iicurs, beyond
Quebec and Montreal, to Toronto, Winnipeg, Van-
couver, and the Klondike. The hronch have followed
timidly in the j)ay of Iho more adventurous Hilton.
Hut all hoi)e of restoring Canada to I'rancc passed away
[ ^-ii J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

when it was clearly demonstrated that the Frenchman
of Canada could not even spread himself abroad with-
out the priest preceding him. No greater national
contrast is offered by history than the helplessness of
the French Canadian peasant, and the resourceful
courage of the French Huguenot in South Africa.

France's day of greatest military glory followed, as
did that of Spain, close upon the heels of a centrahza-
tion which succeeded in effectually suppressing repre-
sentative institutions. The France which had pro-
duced adventurers like Jacques Cartier was a France
in which a certain degree of popular liberty permitted
strong individual characters to develop and find pub-
lic employment. With the consolidation of all politi-
cal power in the hands of a monarch who was himself
but an instrument of another political machine — the
Papacy — free thought became rebellion, and free ac-
tion was possible only to those who became buccaneers
in the West Indies, or sought other adventure among
the Indians of the Canadian Northwest.

Before the end of the seventeenth century', when
Canada did not yet count 10,000 colonists, French ad-
venturers had planted flags and military posts all the
way from the St. Lawrence to the head waters of the
Mississippi; and down that stream to the Gulf of Mex-
ico — claiming it all in the name of the King of France.
Yet, throughout that great sphere, there was not then
a single settlement worthy to compare with the feeblest
of Massachusetts.

Even in 1759 all Canada had but 82,000 white in-
habitants — after two centuries of artificial and very
costly " protection." At that rate it is pretty safe to
I 222 ]

OLD FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD

surmise that it would inevitably have fallen to the New
England colonies or the United States, even without
the blow which Wolfe administered in 1759.

The seizure of Canada by England proved of great
benefit, for it immediately revived commerce, and gave
the people more political liberty than they had ever
known before. When the American War broke out
in 1776, the French settlers repaid this good treatment
by refusing to cast in their lot with the United States,
and, consequently, when that war closed, Canada be-
came a refuge to a large number of Americans who
had remained loyal to the mother-country during the
war.

Down to our day we find in Canada a large com-
munity speaking French and practising the Roman
Catholic religion, without interference from the Prot-
estant English Government. French is used in the
Legislature, and the two languages are on a practical
equality. The people of French descent cling to their
language and religion with the tenacity of peasants —
but they learn English in proportion as they develop
enough intelligence to desire an improvement in their
social position. The same transformation is pro-
gressing in Canada as in Dutch South Africa — Eng-
lish is supplanting all other languages, not because the
police are interfering on its behalf, but because the peo-
ple themselves, as they improve in education, realize
that the English language is a more useful one.

r 223 1

XXI

THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE IN THE WEST
INDIES

** La guerre est la solution violente d' un probleme economique ;
la colonization en est la solution pacifiquey — Colonel Mon-
TEiL. Extract from an address, 1898, Paris.

Liberty and Progress Due to the Freebooters — Martinique and
Guadeloupe — Effect of Slavery

THE French colonists in Canada were much
hampered by being from the outset smoth-
ered in priestly and administrative swaddling
clothes. The French West India Islands, on the con-
trary, showed an extraordinary vitality and prosperity,
owing to the large number of freebooters or buccaneers
who composed the early settlements. At one time,
San Domingo, while under French dominion, far ex-
ceeded Cuba in importance, and to-day, Martinique
is the possession which Frenchmen regard with a just
pride.*

* The spotted career of Hayti and San Domingo is illustrated by these
dates: in 1492 it was discovered by Columbus; in 1493 was planted
here the first Spanish colony. Its name was then Hispaniola. In 1697
it became French, after having for thirty years past been the chosen home
of buccaneers. From 1790 to 1793 the blacks held a carnival of blood-
shed by way of outdoing Paris ; Toussaint Louverture became Negro
Dictator, and in 1801 independence was proclaimed. From that time to
this the island has been a byword for grotesque aping of white man's
government. In 1844 San Domingo seceded and formed a second so-
called Republic.

[ 224 ]

SPIRIT OF FRANCE IN WEST INDIES

On the occasion of my first visit to that part of the
world, Martinique was under quarantine because of
yellow fever, so I landed at Guadeloupe, its sister island
— a trifle larger.

Martinique enjoyed the blessing of having been
seized by England during the wars against the French
Revolution, and of having therefore escaped the po-
litical chaos which followed the violent emancipation
of negroes ordered by the Revolutionary Government
of Paris. Guadeloupe did suffer, because she was not
seized by England. Indeed, there is an element of the
comical in the colonial development of Latin colonies,
when it appears that war has blessed them, only when
it has involved the defeat of the mother-country ! The
prosperity of Manila commenced with the English oc-
cupation of 1762 — and of Havana the same may be
said. The commercial prosperity of Argentine dates
from the English occupation of 1808, and if Martinique
is to-day richer than Guadeloupe or Cayenne, it may
be attributed to the fact that England occupied the
one and not the other.

At Guadeloupe I made the acquaintance of negro
democracy, which finds loud expression since the es-
tablishment of the French Republic in 1870.

A mulatto boatman had been using offensive French
expressions to some fellow - passengers from New
York who were disembarking and had entered rival
boats for the purpose of being rowed ashore. At that
time I was on crutches from an accident and remained
aboard, but, observing the rudeness of this particular
boatman, I called the attention of others to it, with the
result that he secured 110 patioiiagc from our steamer.

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

When I had returned to my long chair, and the
after-deck was deserted of everyone but myself, there
suddenly appeared at the head of the gangway the
head of this same negro — he looked slyly to all sides
— saw that I was alone — whipped out a knife, and
made toward me with a springy step. Of course I was
helpless, and my only hope lay in sparring for time
— so I pretended that I rather enjoyed having my
throat cut and lay back in my chair with my eyes fixed
on the brute. I said nothing. He brandished the
knife above his head and hissed at me : " Jc vais voits
tiier! "

" Tres bicn! " I said — " kill me — and then you'll be
hanged ! " My only hope lay in treating the matter
as a joke — and, fortunately for me, this succeeded, for
the man was in a passion, and on the spur of the mo-
ment might easily have been provoked into a reck-
less move which no cry or action of mine could have
prevented. But the wave of fury passed away from him
as rapidly as it had come; for the negro is the same in
Guadeloupe as in Mozambique or Alabama. In two
minutes from his rush at me, he was begging my for-
giveness, and that I would not hand him over for pun-
ishment.

At that time I was in no mood for undertaking
police reforms, so I exhausted my French vocabulary
in a sermon on politeness, which my would-be mur-
derer promised faithfully to take to heart. Then I
went ashore with him, and hobbled about Pointe a
Pitre — the chief town. It was a little negro Paris.
The architecture and dress were characteristic of the
mother- country. The colored women swept along the
[ 226 ]

SPIRIT OF FRANCE IN WEST INDIES

streets in dresses suggesting the Empress Josephine,
the long train hung over one arm, making a somewhat
coquettish display of ankles, etc. The black women
were singularly graceful and well dressed, comparing
favorably with those in the English islands of Barba-
dos and Antigua. But I saw mainly the result of
unnatural alliances. Of course there was the inevi-
table kiosque with signs in French announcing dances,
concerts, and the like; the streets were named as in
Paris, and, of course, there were the familiar little
tables under awnings outside of the cafes where ab-
sinthe and sirop were being sipped, and French news-
papers were being read, and dominoes being played.

Of course I rested in this little Parisian oasis, and
a kindly French Creole gentleman, who occupied the
next table, opened conversation, the burden of which
was, on his part, that the Republic was ruining France
and her colonies by throwing political power too much
into the hands of the negro. He told me that all whites
thought as he did, that Guadeloupe, as well as Mar-
tinique, would soon revert to the savagery of Hayti
and San Domingo, unless a stop were put upon popu-
lar franchise in a community where blacks outnum-
bered the whites.

" Voycz-vous, monsieur, wc Creoles are not repub-
lican, but our government pretends that wc are. A
black republic is an absurdity — voila loiil! "

I then related my experience of the morning, at
wliich he slnnggod his sliotiiders. saying, '' Md foi!"
"That is the logical outcome of black democracy." *

• Dr. DulJois, of the University of I'l-misylvnniii, 1ms in«(l<' an rxli.ui^-
tivc study of llic negro in l'liilail«'l|iliiii luul also in oilier places further

[ 227 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

My French friend had praise only for the Roman
Catholic Sisters of IMercy, and I felt with him on this
subject, whatever opinions I might entertain regard-
ing the political and theological machinery of which
they form a part.

When I hobbled up to the door of their institution
I was welcomed by the Sisters, who were pure French,
The Mother Superior introduced me to a shed under
whose protection swarmed hundreds of pickaninnies,
varying in shade from jet-black to the color of
honey.

They were a delightful picture of chubby, irrespon-
sible life — more amusing than a basket of kittens.
They all talked French — at least such as were able to
talk at all, and the IMother Superior put them through
a little kindergarten drill for me, which consisted
mainly in clapping their hands, singing French songs,
and marching around like strings of ducklings. At
this institution mothers, for a nominal sum per day,
left their children to be fed, educated, and entertained,
while they themselves went about their daily work.

To impress the children with a sense of duty, the
Mother Superior, a sweet, gentle lady in appearance,
illustrated once more the common saying that the
Roman Church permits prevarication when it is done

south. He says: "The great deficiency of the negro is his small knowl-
edge of the art of organized social life — that last expression of human
culture. His development in group life was abruptly broken off by the
slave-ship, directed into abnormal channels, and dwarfed by the Black
Codes, and suddenly wrenched anew by the Emancipation Proclamation.
He finds himself, therefore, peculiarly weak in that nice adaptation of
individual life to the life of the group which is the essence of civilization.
This is shown in the grosser forms of sexual immorality, disease, and
crime, and also in the difficulty of race organization for common ends in
economic or in intellectual lines."

[ 228 ]

SPIRIT OF FRANCE IN WEST INDIES

in a worthy cause. She made an address in about
these words :

" Little children, you must now be very good. This
gentleman has come from far away to see you. If you
are not good, he will carry you away to Monsieur de
Bismarck."

The eyes of the little black tots " bugged out " por-
tentously at this dreadful threat, and I could not but
think, at the time, that M. de Bismarck's would have
expanded equally, had I driven up to the Rcich-
skansler Palais in the Wilhelm Strasse with a
droschke load of Guadeloupe pickaninnies by way of
tribute !

But the lady's lie contained this truth : namely, the
fact that the name of Bismarck had penetrated to the
French Antilles as a bugaboo or Bogey Man where-
with black babies were frightened into obedience.

Guadeloupe and Martinique to-day send senators
and deputies to the French Chamber, and mulattoes
preach a dangerous democracy among their concito-
ycns of the plantations, whose conception of egalvtc is
to make a division of the white man's property.

Thus much of personal note I have introduced here,
merely to indicate the difference in spirit between the
Frenchman in the West Indies and on the St. Law-
rence. In both, his efforts have been marred by too
free marriage or mingling with the natives — a min-
gling which has rather dragged down the while man
than elevated the black. Rut in their origins, these
French islands have a great advantage over Canada.
The West Indies had, from the very beginning of
Spanish Dominion, attracted the envious attention
I 229 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

not merely of rival governments, but of enterprising
freebooters, notably French, Dutch, and English.
The French Government, it is true, presented the
picture of a monarchy gradually crushing out repre-
sentative institutions, but this very process converted
many of the small gentry into outlaws and adventur-
ers. The wealth of the Spanish Main, the freedom of
the life, the exaggerated stories regarding the ease of
living, the delicious climate and the beauty of the
women, all these conspired to draw to this part of the
w^orld a French element, w^hich, under happier polit-
ical conditions, would have produced eminent servants
of the Cro\yn.

These Frenchmen cared little for prying into the
theology of their neighbors, and whatever their home
government might enact in the way of laws against
heresy, there was no power in the West Indies strong
enough to execute them.

In 1625, almost contemporaneously with the formal
colonization of the St. Lawrence, and within a few
years of the Dutch occupation of New York, an ad-
venturous nobleman of Normandy sailed from Dieppe
with some fifty men and four pieces of artillery. He
reached St. Kitts and returned to France with glowing
accounts of what he had discovered. In 1626 Car-
dinal Richelieu granted to this adventurer both St.
Kitts and Barbados, reserving for the Crown a tithe
of the products for a period of twenty years. These
islands at present are thoroughly English, so far as
they are not United States in sentiment. But at that
time they formed the basis of Louis XIV.'s West Ind-
ian Empire. The company was authorized to engage
[ 230 ]

SPIRIT OF FRANCE IN WEST INDIES

emigrants, who were bound to serve three years, prac-
tically as white slaves. This was the formal consti-
tution of France in the Antilles — an aristocracy of
landlords, white serf-labor, and Crown-protection con-
sisting of trade monopoly with the mother-country.
But the progress under this system was very slow, and
the people of St. Kitts would have starved to death
at one time but for a passing Dutch ship loaded with
food supply. The Dutch soon did all the trade of the
island in spite of French penalties on the subject.

Smuggling in the West Indies, to say nothing of
piracy, was immensely favored by the wonderfully fine
weather prevailing most of the year; by the steadiness
of the trade winds, and by the large number of har-
bors or refuges unknown to all save those who navi-
gated constantly those waters. Small craft with a
light draught, a relatively large spread of canvas, and
a cargo of nothing but war material, and fighting men,
had, among the Antilles, many advantages over the
heavily laden deep-sea merchantman or man-of-war
of those days. Spain, at the height of her power,
found it impossible to suppress the buccaneers, and no
other country had the same direct interest in such an
object. The wealth of Spain and her European wars
had created a class of adventurers whose piracy was
condoned so long as it injured the enemy of the mother-
country. Thus the West Indies became full of " hon-
est " pirates who scuttled Spanish ships one day, car-
ried on contraband trade the next, and ultimately
squared accounts by dividing a portion of their phni-
der with the h^rench Kotnan Catholic missionaries at
whose hands ihcy received the Sacrament.
I -M' I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

That master missionary — the Dominican Father
Labat — narrates somewhere in his delightful book on
the West Indies, that, during his years in Guadeloupe
and Martinique, he never had to spend a farthing on
altar-cloths or other church decoration — he got all he
wanted through pious pirates on their return from
plundering expeditions along the Spanish IMain.

Pere Labat has left a memory dear to the French
Creoles, and he is worshipped as a god by the blacks
for the vast amount of good he did in his day — build-
ing churches and fortifications; encouraging trade,
and, above all, by judiciously ignoring instructions
from home.

The more intolerant France became, the more ob-
stinately did the West Indian French make a virtue
of nullifying acts of the home government. The law
forbidding all but Catholics to colonize was repudiated
by none more contemptuously than this Dominican
father, who wrote in a famous letter that " he was quite
indifferent whether his sugar-cane was grown by a
Lutheran or a Catholic so long as it was good and
white."

It was to a Jew (Da Costa) from Brazil, that the
French West Indies owed the introduction of the
sugar-cane, and the means of manufacturing it for
consumption (1644). Respect for heretics w^as too
deeply ingrafted among the orthodox Creoles of Mar-
tinique for them easily to adopt such narrow views
as were current in Paris. Piracy, smuggling, and buc-
caneering proved for Louis XIV. a better colonial
school than any ever divined for him by ministers of
state or cardinals. His West Indian colonies thrived,
not by reason of his protection, but in spite of it.
[ 232 ]

SPIRIT OF FRANCE IN WEST INDIES

In 1635, one hundred years after the discovery of
the St. Lawrence by Cartier, Louis XIII. sought still
more minutely to regulate the condition of his West
India Islands, and, above all, to maintain an exclusive
trade there — which for obvious reasons was impossible.

He granted to the original company of 1626 an en-
larged charter authorizing them to conquer the whole
of the West Indies, and to administer it pretty much
as they pleased, provided that only Frenchmen and
Catholics be admitted, and that three missionaries be
allotted to each settlement: that efiforts be made to
convert the natives, and that in the following twenty
years 4,000 emigrants be colonized there from France.

The Christianizing clause was the signal for a gen-
eral massacre of natives under the plea that they re-
sisted missionary entreaty, and by 1642 the company
announced that already 7,000 Frenchmen had colo-
nized.

Thanks to the freedom that flourished, in spite of
Louis, the population was of a most varied and useful
kind, and under the influence of the local self-govern-
ment of the buccaneers the Creole community rapidly
fused into a body politic in which all did a share for
the common good, and no one class lorded it over
the rest.

There was from the outset an abundant supply of
white labor, which consisted of the very unfortunate,
who accepted three years of slavery as a means of se-
curing ultimate independence under bettor political
conditions. The dignity of white labor was recog-
nized at tbe outset, ])ul afterward, when the manu-
facture (>[ sugar became I lie .ibsorbing in(hislry, and
when all the iilaiilalions were given over to this one

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

industry, and when African negroes were introduced
and made a part of the great industrial machine, and,
above all, when the social position of a planter came
to be measured by the number of slaves he possessed,
then white labor ceased to be respectable, and blacks
became the exclusive tillers of the soil.

The plough disappeared with the arrival of the
negro and the sugar-mil] — and while more money was
made on the plantations, French writers lament the
decay in political virtue which resulted from the accu-
mulation of large fortunes in few hands.

Adam Smith, as well as others, noticed that in the
French Islands slavery was less harsh than elsewhere.
No doubt the Church must be credited with this
blessed result, and in a second degree the fact that
the French planter lived more intimately with the
natives than did the Englishman.

[ 234 ]

XXII

THE WEST INDIES TWO HUNDRED YEARS

AGO

De Pradt, Archbishop of Ma lines \born I'J^g and died iSjy'\,
in his work on colonies :

" Negro labor is indispensable in colonies.

" Either you must use negroes or abandon the colonies.

** I can no more think of San Domingo without negroes than Brie
without plows. ^^ — Vol. I., p. 259.

Voyage of Pere Labat — Extraordinary Luxury — Treatment of

Natives

DOES anyone seek luxury of living on the high
seas — let him not look for it on the modern
steamer, but on sailing ships. Such has been
my experience — which, if anybody question, let him
consult the Dominican missionary (Labat) as to how
he fared, in 1693, on his sixty days' voyage from
France to the West Indies. He writes of the daily fare :
" When Mass was said, we sat down to breakfast.
We had usually ham, or a 'pdtc' with a 'ragout,'
or a 'fricassee' ; butter and cheese, and ' surtoiit dc
trts bun vin,' and bread, fresh morning and evening."
Dinner was served immediately after the observation
at noon, and consisted of a " grand potage aire Ic
boulli qui ctaii loujouis d'line I'olaillc, tine poitrine de
bccuf d'irlandc, dn petit s(de, et du iiioiiton, on dii
I ^35 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

veaii frais, accompagne d'une fricassee de poidets, ou
autre chose."

This was followed by " un plat de rati, deux ragouts
et deux saladcs; pour le dessert nous avons du frontage,
quelques compotes, des fruits cms, des marrons et
dcs confitures."

Our epicure goes on to explain how it is that salad
appears so often, by telling us that they had on board,
. . . " bonne provision de beteraves, de pourpier,
de cresson, et de cornichons confits," and two big
beds of '* cliicoree sauvage en tcrrc," which latter were
deemed so precious that the captain ordered a sentinel
to watch them day and night lest sailors or rats mo-
lested them. And when one box of salad was used up :
" Nous y semdmes dcs graines de laitues et de raves
que nous y eumcs le plaisir de voir croUre et de
manger avant d^ar river a la Martinique." " And thus
it was," says he, " that we never wanted salad, a re-
freshing treat to which no one can be indifferent on
long journeys." Amen, say I, and the echo of this
Amen, I can imagine coming from every traveller who
has sat down, day after day, to the steamer's meals of
bad coffee, bad eggs, bad butter, bad potatoes, bad
everything; and always apologized for by the stew-
ards, on the ground that, " It's very hard to keep
things fresh, etc.," a feeble bit of mendacity that de-
ceives no one but him who is making his first voyage.
Pere Labat's supper was commonly, " nne grande
soupe avec une poule dessus; deux plats de roti, deux
ragouts, deux salades et le dessert." As the reverend
gentleman has passed into history as an excellent
judge of what should appear at table, it is worth add-
[ 236 ]

THE WEST INDIES 200 YEARS AGO

ing that, in his opinion, the meals were " parfaitemcnt
bien scrvie ct avcc bcaiicoup de propricte." As there
were twelve at table, the captain appointed their
seats to them, in order that they might always have
their own napkins, which we learn were changed tzuice
a week.

Who would not to-day be satisfied with half the
luxury accorded the poor missionary of two hundred
years ago !

And as to wines — they lived in a community that
even Horace could not have complained of; for each,
with one exception, brought a goodly supply of his
own. They tossed the keys of their wine-chests over-
board and made a common cellar. Our apostolic
epicure tells, with gusto, how they teased the one ex-
ception in their convivial twelve. He was the super-
cargo. One fine day the balance of the mess got into
his wine-chest, drank up his stock, and refilled his
flagons with salt-water!

Labat wasted no charity on the English and tells
this story of their alleged barbarity, based upon the
testimony of " ■teinoins octilaires ct dignes de foi";
that they were in the habit of executing such negroes
and Indians as had offended them, by passing them
through the crushers of the sugar-mill, as we pass wet
garments through a clothes wringer — the victims be-
ing tortured, inch by inch, as the horrible cylinders
revolved. " Je nc sais si on pent i)iventcr uii supflice
plus affrenx! "

" Say what you will of iron-works, glass-works, and
other such industries," remarks this missionary,
" there arc none worse (han a sugar-mill; for the first-
( ^\^7 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

mentioned exact but twelve hours' work a day, but
this last exacts eighteen, and of the six hours allowed
these wretches, you must deduct the time for supper
and frequently the time they have to spend in hunting
crabs, for many masters give their slaves only a little
magnoc fiour."

Labat says that the slaves were called half an hour
before day so as to be ready for morning prayers,
which function sometimes required a considerable time,
because in the " maisons bien re glees on fait tin petit
CatecJiisme pour les nouveaux ncgres qu'on dispose
an baptcme, on mix autres sacremens, qitand ils sont
baptise:::'

Those who were to work at the sugar-works, either
the furnaces, the boiling-house, or the mill, went there
and remained until six o'clock at night, working con-
tinually, and not being allowed a single minute for
meal time; whatever they got being gulped down in
snatches while they continued their work, under the
lash of the overseer.

The pious father not liking to have his slaves " foi-
bles et chancelans faiite d'lm petit secojirs," sent them
at noon a dish of farina mixed with bouillon, a piece
of salt meat, and some vegetables, accompanying it
with " i<n coup d'eau de vie," by which, no doubt, he
got better work from his hands.

He also fed all the little children at noon, relieving
the parents of this necessity, so that when the day's
work was over, the mothers had but to hunt their babes
amidst the soft crushed cane, " ott ils les troiwaient
endormis, pour les porter coiicher a leiirs cases"

Great indignation bursts from Pere Labat, when he
[ 238 ]

THE WEST INDIES 200 YEARS AGO

tells his readers that silk culture had been abandoned
in the West Indies in 1694, and abandoned simply be-
cause ants and other nuisances had fastened to the
eggs and cocoons and injured them. " But," says he,
" we could in the past, we can now, and it will always
be easy in the future, to check this evil, and as we have
found means of protecting many other things from the
ravages of these pests, so shall we also protect the silk-
worm." And he foresees great profit from this culture,
because the climate promises a continual crop, the
mulberry-trees having always leaves, and the eggs,
therefore, being able to hatch as soon as made. With
bitterness, Labat tells how " Lc Sieur Piquet dc la
Celle Commis, Principal dc la Compagnie dc 1664,"
joined with his wife, both being from Provence, in the
making of silk, and did so well that he sent some skeins
to Colbert, " Ce Ministrc incomparable," who showed
them to Louis XIV., with the result that the good
colonists received from the Grand Monarch five
hundred ecus, equivalent to about 1,500 francs of
modern money, which was primarily intended to en-
courage the Provencal couple in their good work and
establish a valuable outlet for fresh capital and in-
dustry.

" Nothing in the world," says this Reverend Econ-
omist, " would have been better for the kingdom and
our colonies, for we would then have found at home
what we now get from strangers who enrich them-
selves at our expense."

In 1699 the tobacco-loving world was paralyzed by
the conclusion reached by the Medical College of
France, to wit, that the use of tobacco shortened life,
I 239 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

and, for the moment, those who Hved by trading in
this small vice, thought that they had nothing but
bankruptcy before them. " For," says Labat, philo-
sophically, " tout le mondc vent vivre, et comment
esperer nnc longuc vie apres iin arrest si solonnel? "

But the general panic was allayed, according to our
reverend historian, by calHng the attention of the pub-
lic to the singular fact, that the gentleman who sus-
tained most conspicuously that tobacco was a deadly
weed ignored in an equally striking manner the pre-
cepts he laid down for others. We are told that " son
nez n'etait pas d'accord avec so langiie: car on rcmarqita,
que pendant tout le temps que Facte dura, il ent toiijonrs
sa tabatiere a la main, et ne cessa pas nn moment de
prendre du tabac."

With this, a reaction set in, and, to believe our cler-
ical friend, the present use of tobacco is infantile com-
pared to what prevailed in the golden age of French
letters. People used the drug then " avec une espece
de fiireur, qui ne permit plus de distinguer ni Ics lieux,
ni les iemps, ni les ages, ni les sexes, ni les temper a-
maits, ni les personnes." People indulged in snuff in
walking, talking, eating — even at their prayers — and
some were known to wake up in the night in order to
have a pinch. People wondered they had lived so long
without tobacco, and became convinced that they
w^ould die if they ceased to use it. " People went so
far as to use snuff in church, in the very presence of
God. whom one adores there, and the Sacrifice re-
doubtable which is offered there not being enough to
inspire the proper respect and attention that believing
Christians should have." Some Popes launched
[ 240 ]

THE WEST INDIES 200 YEARS AGO

Bulls at the practice, but it ended, needless to say, in
Smoke !

Labat visited Grenada in 1700 on his way from Bar-
bados, and the contrast to him was so painful that he
could not but give vent to his disgust. '* The Eng-
lish," he says, " are far ahead of us in taking advantage
of their opportunities, and if Grenada belonged to
them it would long ago have altered appearance and
become a rich and mighty colony. Instead of this
we have done nothing to take advantage of what we
have here, and in spite of the many years we have
been in possession, the country is still uncultivated, ill-
populated, without comforts, without trade, poor, its
houses, or I should say rather huts, badly built and
worse furnished — in short, almost in the condition
they were in originally (1650) when M. du Parquet
bought the island from the Caribs."

The wine merchant in the reign of Louis XIV. ap-
pears to have had a conscience differing but slightly
from that of his descendant, for Labat, who under-
stood what a good cellar meant, says that no West
Indian should buy Bordeaux wines from merely look-
ing at the labels — he should taste them himself. The
consumption of wine, he says, was enormous in his
day, and he dares not repeat what the customs officers
told him under this head, lest he be " suspected of ex-
aggeration." He drank there not only the Bordeaux
and Cahors brands, but also those of rrovence, Laii-
;gucdoc, Italy, Spain, Madeira, Canary, Portugal, tlu'
Rhine, Ncckar, Moselle, liingmidy, and Chanipa,i;iu'
— a goodly assortment for thai day.

As to " Eau-dc-vic, rl </<■ Ionics sorlcs dc litjiiriirs,"
I 241 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

both French and foreign, " la consommation qui s'cn
faii passe r imagination; tout le monde en vciit boire,
le prix est la derniere chose de quoi on sinforme! "

This part of the world must have been the paradise
of traders in 1694, for Labat wrote: " Lcs toiles les
plus fines, Ics plus belles mousselines, et les mieux
travaillccs, les perruqucs les plus a la mode, les
cJiapcaux de castor, les bas de soye et de laine, les
soldier, les bottines, les draps, de - iottte espece, les
etoffes de soye, d'or ct d' argent, les galons d'or, les
Cannes, les tabaticres et aiitres seniblablcs bijoux; les
denielles les plus fines, les coiffures de fenime, de
quelque prix qu'clle puissent etre, la vaisselle d'argent,
les montres, les pierreries, en un mot, iout ce qui pent
servir a Vhabillement des honuncs, a l anieublement
et ornement des maisons, et surtout aux parures des
femmes; tout est bien vendu chcrcnicnt et proniptenient."

" For," continues our philosophic celibate, " the sex
is the same all the world over; vain, wayward, ambi-
tious. The tradespeople have no fear of losing when
they sell to them for their particular purposes, for if
their husbands are a little difficile on this point, elks
ont toutes naturcllemeni des talens mcrveilleux pour
les mettre a la raison, et qttand ccla manque, elks
saz'cnt en perfection faire dii siicre, de I'indigo, on du
cacao de Lune avec quoi elles contentent les mar-
chands, qui accoutiimes a ces manoeuvres leur pretent la
main et leur gardent religieusement le secret."

This making of sugar, etc., de Lune was the ex-
pression in that day for making it illegally, or more
plainly for stealing it, and the recording friar tells us
that wives in the French islands never told their hus-
[ 242 ]

THE WEST INDIES 200 YEARS AGO

bands by any accident the real price of what they
bought, but made up the difference to the tradespeo-
ple by conniving with them to steal from the planta-
tion produce at night. The term " moonlighting,"
as used in the regions where illicit whiskey is made,
helps one to appreciate the origin of the term.

Pere Labat said, in 1700: " The air of St. Kitts is
very pure, the result of which is that good blood is
produced there, the complexion of the women is ad-
mirable and their features most regular. Both sexes
are full of wit and vivacity, and they all have perfect
figures." An old proverb had it that St. Kitts pro-
duced nobility; Guadelupe the bourgeois; soldiers in
Martinique, and peasants in Grenada.

The monkeys that now form such a feature of the
islands, notably in the ruins of old Fort Charles, are
said to have had their beginning in a number of tame
ones that were released from private dwellings in one
of the numerous early wars. Even in Labat's time
they were a great plague by their clever thieving, and
when he went on a shooting party after them, he and
his friends had some of the feelings associated with
driving out a common enemy. But, in spite of their
roguery, the priest's heart was touched when he found
that he had shot a mother whose monkey baby clung
to her neck even after she was dead and could with dif-
ficulty be removed. This little monkey was, however,
laken home and turned out a deligiitful little com-
panion.

His friend, Pcrc Cabasson, had a monkey so devoted
to him that he would never leave iiini, and when the
I'crc had to go to his elmn li service he would lock up
[ 243 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

his monkey in his study to prevent his following.
Once the monkey escaped, and having, it seems, con-
cealed himself above the pulpit, did not show himself
until the sermon commenced. Then coming out to
the edge of the pulpit roof, he watched his master care-
fully and commenced to imitate his gestures — at which
the congregation naturally laughed. Father Cabasson,
who did not dream of the source of this entertainment,
reproved them, at first in moderate tones; but find-
ing that shouts of laughter grew in intensity as he
progressed his displeasure took the shape of sainte
colcrc, and he began a most energetic crusade against
their want of respect for the word of God. His gest-
ures grew more violent, so did the grimaces and post-
ures of the monkey, and so did the laughter of his
congregation. His attention was finally called to his
monkey, and at this he could not help joining in the
laugh with the rest. There was no means of getting
at the animal, and he therefore, on the spot, dismissed
the congregation: " netant plus liii-meme en etat de le
continue}-, ni les auditeiirs de recoiiter."

A priest so conversant with the world and the flesh
as Father Labat can never fail to interest when describ-
ing social features of life. He was an admirer of the
English in many respects — perhaps the best evidence
we have of this is the detailed manner in which he
tells his countrymen how British houses might be
pillaged.

In St. Kitts he enjoyed English hospitality and car-
ried away some impressions, such as that the good
people here had handsome punch-bowls, understood
the ingredients very well, and how to entertain their
[ 244 ]

THE WEST INDIES 200 YEARS AGO

friends about it — a feature of St. Kitts which years
have in no wise dimmed.

The English ladies, he observed, carved with much
skill and grace, and stimulated their guests to drink by
setting them a good example in this respect. This I
hope is exaggeration.

Of the men he says that, " As they are all rich they
love to display their generous way of living, and have
their cellars well stocked with a great variety of wines
from the most distant corners of the earth."

He noticed at dinners that Englishmen treated their
clergymen with scant consideration, and adds, " Jc nc
sais si c'est par irrcligion, on si c'cst la conduite dcs
ministres qui leur attire ce mepris.''

Of the adorable St. Kitts ladies he says, " Lcs fcm-
mes Anglaiscs soiit habillccs a la Frangaisc, du nioins
leurs habillcments en approchent bcaiicoiip. lis soiit
riches et magnifiqiic ct scraicni d'un trcs hon gout,
si elles n'y meiiaicnt ricii du lour; mais commc cllcs
veulent toujours enchcrir sur lcs modes qui vienncnt de
France, ccs hors-d'oeuvres gdtent toute la simctrie et le bon
gout qui s'y irouverait sans cela."

He says also that he never in his life saw more
{ranges d'or, d'argent, ct de soye quit y en avait sur
CCS dames " — in fact he describes tlicm as being decked
in them from head to foot, although he admits that
their linen is very fine — also their lace.

[ 245 ]

XXIII

COLONIAL FRANCE TO-DAY

*' Everywhere in our \^FrencF\ Colonies we have formed excellent
native troops. In Algeria you have seen them. It is the same in
Senegambia and the Soudan. They are loyal and admirable sol-
diers with whom I have made all my different expeditions. In
Indo- China we have also had good results — notably with the Anna-
mites and Tonquinese.^^ — Extract from a letter by the eminent
soldier and explorer Colonel Monteil of the French army.

Desire for Colonies, Why Unsuccessful — Excellence as Mis-
sionaries, Italian Emigrants.

SINCE the Franco-German War the French na-
tion has sought consolation in colonial expan-
sion, and the French flag now flies over an im-
mense area of northern and tropical Africa, Tonquin,
and parts of Polynesia.* France now, as in the days
of Champlain, shows no lack of venturesome spirits,
and the annals of modern exploration contain few
names more glorious than that of Colonel Monteil.
But, though France in her colonies shows to-day
greater liberality than in the time of Louis XIV., she
yet reflects the failings of the mother country to an

* Colonial France means more than three and a half million of square
miles, with more than 55,000,000 of inhabitants. This luxury cost
France in 1898 more than $20,000,000. Germany owns about 1,000,000
square miles of colony with nearly 10,000,000 population, and this cost
her in 1898 about $5,000,000. These sums may be regarded as the
price per year of such colonial glory — for in neither case is the trade in-
volved commensurate with the military and administrative cost.

[ 246 ]

COLONIAL FRANCE TO-DAY

extent which depresses her own most serious writers
on the subject.

Leroy-Beaulieu, speaking of French Guiana and the
penal colony which recently contained Captain Drey-
fus, noted that in the forty-six years from 1817 to 1863,
the Government had changed the official head of the
settlement on an average more frequently than once in
two years. Out of a budget of 1,000,000 francs, less
than 100,000 was spent for the colony, all the remain-
der going into the pockets of officials.

In a population numbering only 20,000 altogether,
1,000 were Government officials — and this not count-
ing soldiers and sailors.

" Not only was there no municipal or provincial
representation; there was no press, and even the right
of petition was refused to the inhabitants." (" Dc la
Colonisation,'' p. 523.)

Next door to French Guiana was British Guiana
flourishing under a healthy representative administra-
tion while Cayenne pined away under the suffocating
influence of too much officialism.

The excellent roads which the French have built in
Northern Africa, and, above all, the vast sums ex-
pended on railway construction and military effective-
ness, prove that France is thoroughly in earnest from
an administrative point of view. The general com-
manding the division of Oran told me (hat he regarded
the railway as the main civilizing instrnniciil of h^rancc,
that we must li;ivc jKilicncc and faith in llic fntine,
that savage lii1)cs ulio now prowled on the Hanks of
caravan (-(jlnnnis would nltimatcly give up nomadic
life and till the; soil, when tin- locomotive should have
I ~\7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

demonstrated that brigandage was no longer profit-
able or even possible.

The French nation has shown itself strangely sus-
ceptible to far-reaching projects and ideals far re-
moved from mere gain. To the more sober Anglo-
Saxon they sometimes appear visionary. It was at the
despotic court of Louis XV. that republican philos-
ophy became first fashionable in Europe — it was in
the salons of the aristocrats that the guillotine of the
Revolution was whetted.

Napoleon I. dazzled a people whom he enslaved by
phrases and the dream of universal empire, while in
our day Republican France hails the Russian Czar as
protector. She develops vast military energy and
popular enthusiasm in acquiring colonies which pro-
duce no revenue, but flatter the rising generation, who
think that the size of a country is the measure of its
importance. The French are proverbially reluctant to
leave their country, even as tourists. Yet in no other
country does the public mind occupy itself so much
with the military and official side of colonization. The
Frenchman, impatient of military routine at home, has
but to plunge into the African wilderness, and plant
the flag of his country in some lonely place, to be im-
mediately recognized by the press as a notable person.
Should it happen that the flag was inadvertently stuck
into soil already occupied by England, and should his
action be resented in London, he returns not merely
a hero, but something of a martyr as well. On his way
to Paris deputations from the various towns greet him
with wreaths and brass bands. The press finds in his
glorious failure a text from which to preach upon the
[ 248 ]

COLONIAL FRANCE TO-DAY

greed of " perfidious Albion," and thus new fuel is
added to the popular fires of colonial zeal.

Northern Africa is dear to the Frenchman, for it
represents the soil on which his armies have fought
from the Pyramids to the Pillars of Hercules. He
has done much for Egypt; notably was it a French-
man who built the Suez Canal in 1869. But it was
English shipping which made it profitable, and it was
ultimately England to whom Egypt owed the capture
of Khartoum, and good administration throughout
the valley of the Nile.

Algiers is but a few hours' sail from the South of
France, and Tunis not much further. Here is the field
in which we might look for a prosperous French peas-
antry under climatic conditions but slightly different
from those prevailing in Provence or Gascony. Yet
to-day it is not the Frenchman, but the Italian and the
Spaniard who furnish the language of the white man
for this part of the world. There are French cafes in
the towns, and the little round tables are occupied by
French officials; French uniforms are on all sides, and
the French flag waves over the Government buildings.
That flag is a blessing to the country so far as it means
good roads, efficient police, courts of justice, harbor
works, and other necessary expenditure. But from a
colonial point of view Spain and Italy are the coun-
tries directly benefited rather than France.

Italy to-day has no colonics, yet she is one of the
most prolific of countries, and sends forth annually
thousands of her hardy people to New York, Buenos
Ayrcs, and Norlhcni Africa, lo say nothing of tlu- large
number who liiid temporary employment in I'rancc,
[ 249 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Switzerland, Hungary, and Austria. Many of her
statesmen deplore this state of things, and dream of
a better day when Italy shall have a colony of her own
inhabited solely by Italians and governed exclusively
by the home government.

It was this false point of view which encouraged
that disastrous attempt against Abyssinia in 1896. It
w^as the same false philosophy which made Bismarck
discourage Germans from emigrating to America.
Fortunately for Italy she has to-day neither the money
nor the power to attempt Bismarckian schemes of colo-
nization, much less to compete with France in the
military administration of distant countries. She must
perforce witness ship after ship load of her hardy peas-
antry sailing away to distant countries, carrying not
merely their little savings, but their strong arms and
future hopes.

Italy to-day pines for colonies and regrets that she
cannot prevent emigration by the same measures
which James I. used to discourage Puritans from leav-
ing England.

But that which ofificial Italy does not do to-day will
in less than fifty years prove a greater blessing than
anything we can possibly imagine her to have done
through the instrumentality of her army or navy.

The Italy that is reproducing itself under the French
flag in Africa, under the American flag on the banks
of the Hudson, or in far-away settlements of South
America — that is an Italy which in the next generation
will help to build up the commerce of the mother coun-
try to a degree little dreamed of by those who now look
upon every emigrant as a loss to the country of his
birth.

[ 250 ]

COLONIAL FRANCE TO-DAY

France is doing a great work in the civilization of
the world, notably among inferior races. Her mis-
sionaries are more successful than ours, and, whether
in the backwoods of Canada, among the negroes of
the West Indies, or in the Far East, the Frenchman
has to a remarkable degree shown a capacity to live
the life of the subject race, and acquire personal ascen-
dancy over him.

The history of the French in India has been fre-
quently noted by English historians as a notable in-
stance of failure on the eve of a great triumph, for at
one time France, with a handful of clever negotiators
and enterprising soldiers, had apparently mastered the
land of the Great Mogul.

Yet the French administration in India crumbled to
pieces under the quick strokes of a handful of English-
men with the same startling completeness which char-
acterized her loss of Canada at about the same time
(1759). And the reasons were roughly analogous —
persisting to this day. The Frenchman is a brave sol-
dier, and his fellow-citizens have a passion for detailed
administration. They conquer and they govern, but
they do not colonize. When they govern they govern
too much. They are suspicious of native initiative and
distrustful of colonial self-government.

It does, indeed, seem as though history rejoiced in
paradoxes, when we have to note thai the Scandina-
vians, the Germans, and the Italian people, without
colonies worth mentioning, send forth annually a
powerful stream of hmnanity (o enrich other countries
— and that France, with her vast colonial jiosscssions,
should show herself capable of producing nearly every-
thing but colonies.

[ -'51 I

XXIV

THE SPREAD OF RUSSIA

" The Russian is a delightful person till he tucks his shirt in.^'

"It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most east-
erly of western peoples, instead of the most westerly of easterns,
that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. ' ' —
Kipling, "The Man Who Was."

The Colonization of Siberia — Conflict Between China and
Russia

RUSSIA resembles the United States in the
extent to which she has spread her people
and her institutions from sea to sea across a
continent. But there the resemblance stops. Every
foot of North American soil has been conquered by
free men who have marked every stage of their prog-
ress by free schools and representative government.
From the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay and from
Newfoundland to the Golden Gate, the march of
Anglo-Saxon colonization has been in this century
one of human liberty and of English language and in-
stitutions. Liberty tempered by the common law has
produced over this vast area a practical homogeneity
of social and political life, unprecedented in the history
of the world. Looked at from a distance — say the
standpoint of the Russians — there is less dissimilarity
[ 252 ]

THE SPREAD OF RUSSIA

between Manitoba and Minnesota, New York and
Ontario, than between almost any two of Russia's
great provinces, which from an English or American
point of view seem monotonously like one another.

The colonizing movement of Russia commenced
three centuries ago and even earlier. Successive Mus-
covite emperors suppressed the independence of neigh-
boring states, and then proceeded to spread religious
and political orthodoxy by such brutal methods that
the few who were able took refuge in the wilderness,
banding themselves for offensive and defensive pur-
poses.

In this way arose the Cossack communities which
for generations maintained their liberties as against
the home government, and proved a strong attraction
to those who were compelled to fly from the injustice
of their home government.

Peter the Great did not die till 1729, which shows
us that up to that time the government of Russia had
but little to distinguish it from that of semi-savage
tribes, whose liberties are at the mercy of a monster
• — half monkey, half maniac — exercising authority
through the superstitious reverence inspired by a cun-
ning priesthood.

Step by step the Ru.ssian iMnpirc has enlarged its
area, and each successive stc|) has been marked by
the crushing out of national independence and |)cr-
sonal liberty. Three iCuropean commimities has Rus-
sia incor|)oralc(l, ami she has sought to drag eni-h
down to her own level — I refer to the I'oles, the I-'iiuis,
and the Ciernians of the r.allic i'rovinces. llistory
furnislies few i)arallel examples of an inferior civiliza-
[ 253 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

tion so situated geographically as to crush out in de-
tail the superior civilization of so many neighboring
communities. It was the good fortune of Russia to
have as an ally in the crushing of Poland the cordial
assistance of the Prussian Monarchy, through succes-
sive reigns, so that the refugee Poles, when defeated in
their own country, found the frontiers of Prussia as in-
hospitable as those of Russia. Finland became a Rus-
sian province through a bargain with Napoleon the
Great, and the German Provinces on the Baltic are
being de-Germanized by Russian priests and police-
men, because the German Empire is so busy maintain-
ing its rights on the other side of the earth that it can-
not feel its children tugging at the very skirts of the
mother country.

For the colonization which Russia undertakes she
has facilities of an exceptional kind. The mere fact
that out of 100,000,000 Russians there are some 99,-
000,000 who can neither read nor write, is of incal-
culable value to an administration like that which the
Holy Czar represents. The Russian peasant, as he
crouches in the furrow munching his noon-day crust,
resembles some animal just emerged from a burrow
— essentially akin to the soil he inhabits. Of him
pre-eminently are the words of Edwin Markham ap-
phcable when apostrophizing " The Man with a Hoe."

" The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world. "

Russian history amply answers the poet's fierce
query :

" Whose was the hand that slanted back his brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain ? "

[ 254 ]

THE SPREAD OF RUSSIA

With 99,000,000 of two-legged creatures on the so-
cial and intellectual level of domestic cattle, coloniza-
tion on the Russian plan cannot fail to succeed. The
priest gives the order in the name of the Czar, and
whole families transport themselves to Siberia with as
little concern for the future as a car-load of oxen on
their way to Kansas City.

These colonists squat in the furrows of Siberia with
the same rabbit-like fitness of color that they show in
the fields about Moscow, or in the sandy wastes be-
tween Petersburg and Vilna. The parish priest goes
with them, and the same communistic village com-
munity reproduces itself on the banks of the Amoor
as on those of the Volga.

Russia is anything but an over-populated country,*
and Siberia is not a California or a Johannesburg. The
Czar has moved his people eastward for political and
strategic reasons, because he required an army of
occupation and the cheapest army was the one which
handled the hoe as well as the rifle.

The aristocracy of this army consisted in fugitives
from justice or criminals deported for political or other
crimes. The total number it is no more possible to
establish than the number of Americans who crossed
the Mississippi River fifty years ago in search of Pike's
Peak. It is sufficient, though, for us to know that
more than 1,000,000 have been deported, according to
official returns, since the beginning of that system,
and that many more have gone thither of tlicir own
accord to escape the Metropolitan police. In the Rus-

* Kussia controls about ti'n^hl imd a lialf millions of S(|iiarc niili-s ami a
population of nciirly I jo.oihj.ooo. l''citliinMlcly for civili/.ution tlu" power
uf un urniy is not nicusurcil by niinibcts only.

I -'55 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

sian army it has been the rule to allow no Pole to
rise to any position of importance so long as he re-
mained in Poland. If he wishes to have a military
career it must be far away, against Asiatic tribes where
no love of his own people can interfere with the allegi-
ance due to the Czar. The reason for this is to be
sought in the fear of a Polish rising. Consequently
Russian officers command in Poland, while Polish of-
ficers are to be found mainly to the eastward of the
Black Sea.

The Czar is aided in his colonial work by being not
merely the nominal, but the actual head of his Church,
Every peasant's hut, every boat, the waiting-room of
every railway station — indeed, nearly every available
spot in the Russian Empire has an Eikon or religious
tablet, dedicated to the Czar as the head of the Russian
Church. In the upper walks of this Church are schol-
ars and politicians of the first rank, and at the bottom
is a priesthood closely in sympathy with peasant life
and superstition. The parish priest of Russia knows
a little more than the peasant — not much. He tills
the ground like the peasant; enjoys his glass of
brandy, and makes no pretension of belonging to a
higher social stratum. Any superiority he arrogates
is exclusively that of his license to perform clerical
functions, and, above all, to get a few fees from the
credulous by squirting holy water over pigs and cows
in order to prevent disease.

In a third-class carriage on the way from Odessa
to Kiev, I found myself once in the midst of a mixed
company of peasants, two priests, and a partially in-
toxicated Polish pedler. The priests were communi-
[ 256 ]

THE SPREAD OF RUSSIA

cative and I asked them, since they understood no
French or German, whether they could talk Latin?
They shook their heads, and the Polish pedler then
took off his hat, held it up to the forty-odd fellow-pas-
sengers, and shouted after the manner of a prestidigi-
tator: " Is there anything in that hat? "

There was an answering shout of " No."

" Then my hat is just as full as a priest's head," — at
which there was a hearty laugh in which the priests
joined !

A priesthood of this nature, whose grasp of civiliza-
tion reaches little beyond a brandy bottle and an
Eikon, has great advantages in certain forms of colo-
nization over men who represent generations of men-
tal and physical breeding.

To somewhat the same degree the Russian official,
military and civil, lends himself readily to a life of
rough frontier work among half-civilized natives. The
Russian uniform frequently masks a man little better
than a serf; for while Russia has in her military ser-
vice, as in her Church, a small elite of highly present-
able men, mainly of Polish or German ancestry, the
average Russian officer shares the weaknesses and the
virtues of the Slav. He is essentially an easy-going
nature, fond of food and drink, and readily mingles
with his fellow-men of every grade.

One morning, l)ctwccn Petersburg and Novogorod.
I awoke in a railway carriage to find a Russian major
in uniform rolling on the floor with a f.it civilian,
whom he was hugging and kissing in maudlin nijiturc.
They were both luippily dnnik. The civilian was a
forage oontrnclor, and the major belonged to a rcgi-
I 257 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

ment of which the German Emperor is honorary colo-
nel, and among whose officers I had some acquaint-
ances. The extraordinary thing about this drunken
episode was not so much that an officer should appear
drunk in public, as that his brother officers should re-
gard the matter as something quite usual.

No other European power has sought to fuse with
Chinese. The Russian is doing it and is moderately
successful.

In Eastern Siberia are many tribes that bridge over
the ethnological difference between the Caucasian and
the Oriental, and thus Russia has at hand useful agents
for her administrative pioneering.

For more than a century the Czar has maintained
at Pekin a mission consisting of ten priests who have
carefully abstained from missionary work, but have
furnished their Government w'ith information on what
was going on about them.

When I reached Chefoo, opposite Port Arthur, in
1898, I met there a delightfully sociable Russian colo-
nel, who took great interest in my movements, and was
apparently visiting Cheefoo for his health. On in-
quiry I found that he had been for years stationed
there for no other purpose than to act as a government
spy at that point of the Chinese coast.

Russia to-day affords the most complete picture of
administrative colonization on record. No other coun-
try has the same number of tame human creatures
which can be moved upon the political chess-board
according to orders from one centre. Other countries
would gladly do it, but their rulers lack either the
power or the territory. The Trans-Siberian railway
[ 258 ]

THE SPREAD OF RUSSIA

promises to make her Asiatic conquest still more com-
plete by carrying the centre of population further away
from Moscow. We are now only on the threshold of
Russian power in Asia. Only in our day has the stage
of violent conquest ceased — the next will see vast en-
gineering works — land improved by means of irriga-
tion, more railways, and other improvements in the
way of transportation, new cities and centres of com-
mercial life. Schools must follow and universities as
well, if only to supply the professional needs of the
Government.

We cannot suppose that this vast country will re-
main, as it now is, merely a desert of official monotony
with an occasional oasis of Polish exiles. Time is not
far away when the people of Siberia will challenge
those of Russia proper, as do the people of the Ameri-
can West challenge the old States of New England.
Commercial interests will clash, and the problem of
despotism will become the more difficult in proportion
as population increases in intelligence at a greater and
greater distance from the capital.

Will Russia over- run China and India? Possibly,
but not under her present form of government. The
Chinese as well as the natives of the British East Indies
arc not wholly without some knowledge of the relative
merits of European powers, and as time goes on this
knowledge will increase rather than otherwise. The
fact that to-day Cliina cof|ucts with Russia, and that
the Emir of Afghanistan is ambiguously loyal to the
British Crown is no criterion of what would happen
in case Russia seriously attempted the absoriilioii of
either India or China.

[ 259 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Russia may occupy Kandahar, and even fly her flag
over Pekin. She can do that according to her present
colonizing programme, and the world need not regret
the change of ownership. But beyond that the ma-
chinery of the Czar will prove inadequate unless the
nations themselves invite Russia to become master
among them. India supports the rule of England be-
cause no considerable portion of that population can
see their advantage in making a change. But even
those who like British dominion least would suffer
much more, rather than shift from under the present
yoke to that of Russia.

And in China the people are likely to be influenced
by much the same line of reasoning. Under the Eng-
lish flag, Chinese trade has expanded enormously and
Chinese life and property have been safe; more than
that, the Chinaman has enjoyed a personal liberty
equal to that of white men. He is not likely to wish
a change to Russian rule, and the more he studies the
matter the more inclined will he be to create obstacles
in the path of Russia rather than to assist in any further
Russification of his country.

The Japanese of to-day entertain aversion to Rus-
sia because of her having (1875) annexed a Japanese
island, Saghalien, and having added insult to injury
by making it a dumping ground for criminals. The
Japanese also maintain a species of " Monroe Doc-
trine " in regard to European interference with things
Chinese, particularly in Corea, which the Japanese re-
gard as jealously as the United States do Alexico.

On my visit to Corea, I found Seoul practically a
Japanese settlement, and, considering the nearness of
[ 260 ]

THE SPREAD OF RUSSIA

Corea to China, it is not strange that the Mikado
should look with suspicion upon any move likely to
make Russia his neighbor at that point.

The last quarter of a century has seen the awakening
of the Far East to a sense of national responsibility.
Japan has led the way, and has now an army and navy
and civil administration which make her to-day the
strongest fighting force in the world, in proportion to
her population.

China, on the other hand, is one of the weakest.
The Chinese-Japanese War of 1894-5 was of great im-
portance to Europe, in that it established the ascen-
dancy of Japan over China; convinced the Chinese
that they must make internal reforms, and led them
to seek support in Japan rather than in Europe.

The basis of Chinese and Japanese understanding
was laid during that war — a war which has left friend-
ship, not bitterness, behind.

In 1898 China sent no less than thirty military rep-
resentatives to the Japanese army manoeuvres, and
these fraternized with the Japanese officers in a signifi-
cant manner.

Russian colonization, then, so far as it is administra-
tive and military, is nearing its limits. Each day makes
her progress more difficult, each day creates a stronger
national opposition in China, each move brings the
Russian serf face to face with a denser and less malle-
able population. The task of Russia is a large one
— simply to j)rcvcnt her I'lmpire from falling to i)icocs,
under the weight of f)fficial ignorance and corrni)tii>n.

ivussia has done marvellous colonizing work whore
resistance has been sliglil. She has spread herself suc-
I -'(.I I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

cessfully among barbarous tribes, but has failed com-
pletely in commanding the respect of Poles, Finns, or
Germans.

The failure of her methods at the westernmost end
of her Empire will be repeated in the Far East, should
she seek to match the Moudjik against the crafty and
tenacious Chinaman. For tasks of this nature instru-
ments are needed such as are not forged in the work-
shops of Holy Russia.

[ 262 ]

XXV

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH COLONIZA-
TION IN AMERICA

" Imperial (^British') Federation, and the Expansion of the
United States are facts which . . . are secondary in impor-
tance to nothing contemporaneous.^^ — Mahan, "The War in South
Africa," p. 80.

Settlement of Virginia, New England, Barbados — Capacity of
English for Self-government

ENGLISHMEN commenced founding perma-
nent colonies in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
and we are still at the same work. England
has, in times past, enacted for the government of her
colonies laws quite as oppressive as those of Spain and
has sought to enforce by violence a respect for them.
Fortunately for our race she has rarely succeeded
more than momentarily in such efiforts. She who
broke the power of Spain and wrested Canada from
France, who treated Portugal as a vassal state and
reduced Holland to a minor power, this same proud
mistress of the seas was over and over again checked
and mortified by a handful of her own children, who,
whether in Jiarbados or Massachusetts, Maryland or
Virginia, defended their political liberties with the
stubbf^rnness and sagacity of colonial Croniwrlls.
if, as wc have seen, bianco, Portugal, and Holland
[ 263 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

owe their most vigorous colonizing success to irregu-
lar, not to say illegal, beginnings, it is still more note-
worthy that England's empire on the Western Hemi-
sphere was laid by Englishmen animated not merely by
a love of liberty common to mankind, but by a respect
for constituted authority and by a capacity for political
organization almost unknown elsewhere at that time.
It is the proudest triumph of Great Britain that she
has sent forth her children into the wilderness, or-
ganized from the very start in self-governing political
units.

In the France which I can recall as a child, citizens
were forbidden to assemble together for the discussion
of political questions, and the press could print only
what was permitted by the police. When the Franco-
German War made a republic of this helplessly
brought-up body, men were suddenly called to office
by popular vote who had, as a rule, less practical ex-
perience of parliamentary forms than the average
Anglo-Saxon school-boy. In Spain the republic of
Castelar was a mere debating society so far as its rep-
resentative capacity was concerned. In Germany the
feeble beginnings of Parliamentary government were
from the outset (1848), and continue to be (1901)
overshadowed by a very large and very-well organized
force of soldiers and semi-military officials who look
for their authority not to the representatives of the
people, but to the one who commands the fighting
forces. In Europe, England is the only great power
whose people govern themselves, and it is the only
great power whose colonies have risen up to comfort
her declining years.

[ 264 ]

ENGLISH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA

The beginnings of English adventure in far-away
seas, were, like those of Holland, influenced mainly by
a desire to encroach upon the fabulous possessions of
Spain and Portugal. North America was looked to
not as a colonizing field, but merely as a stage on the
way to the East Indies, and many early English navi-
gators enriched geographical science, but wasted much
money, in seeking through the Polar Seas a North-
west Passage to the land of the Great Mogul.

In 1577, Sir Francis Drake started on the voyage
which made him the first Englishman to sail round the
world. It was a grand achievement, geographically,
but politically even more notable from the extent to
which he filled his ship with Spanish gold, and spread
alarm up and down the coasts of South America.
Spain protested energetically, but as her claims rested
upon the bull of a theological ruler whose authority
Queen Elizal)eth as a Protestant did not recognize, it
followed logically that, as she told the Spanish envoy,
she would recognize Spain's right only where there
was actual occupation.

In 1584, Elizabeth endowed Sir Walter Raleigh
with the right to colonize every unoccupied part of
America, in language marking distinctly the great gulf
between Spanish and English colonial methods. II cr
words were: " The colonists have all the privileges of
free denizens and persons native of England, in such
ample manner as if Ihcy were born and jjcrsonaliy resi-
dent in our .said realm of h'ngland."

Under illiberal govcrmnent and among helpless peo-
ple, her charter might be abused, but with coloinsts
such as her times prodtucd, there was ambiguity
[ 205 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

enough to guarantee as much self-government and
rehgious hberty as the colonists themselves deemed
expedient. The destruction of the Spanish Armada
in 1588, gave England the control of the seas, at least
in the North Atlantic, and thus contributed enor-
mously to tlie fostering of peaceful colonial schemes,
as contradistinguished from those involving perpetual
warfare with Spain in South America, or Portugal and
Holland in the East Indies. It w^as obviously appre-
ciated, even at court, that English colonial companies
did their ample duty as subjects of the Crown, if they
placed a check, to however small an extent, upon Span-
ish expansion from the south and French expansion
from the north, to say nothing of the colonial wedge
that Holland and Sweden threatened to drive between
New England and Maryland.

In 1607, Jamestown, in Virginia, was settled by the
assistance of an English company, which transported
thither one hundred and five colonists, half of whom
were '' gentlemen," but with only a small sprinkling
of mechanics, and only twelve agricultural laborers.
The beginnings were not encouraging in this case, for
these colonists came in anticipation of finding life
easy. On the contrary, they found swamp fever and
a breed of Indians that possessed neither treasures
worth plundering nor qualities fitting them to be en-
slaved. But the settlement was not abandoned, and
each year brought an accretion of membership. The
company clamored for dividends, but got none; the
colonists, on the other hand, found that, though they
had to work hard, they had before them the prospect
of independence if not fortune, and thus from the out-
[ 266 ]

ENGLISH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA

set the community developed a government which,
while it reflected somewhat that of a landed aristoc-
racy, nevertheless had enough of self-government to
make every man in it feel a pride in the future of the
commonwealth. There was a refreshing absence of
legislation hostile to aliens or unorthodox creeds; and
though, under the vicissitudes of domestic legislation,
many illiberal laws were passed at Westminster, they
were never able to over-ride the unwritten constitu-
tion of the colonies on the subject of religious and po-
litical liberty. In 1619, before the first Puritan had
landed in Massachusetts, the Virginia colony had al-
ready a population of 4,000 whites and an annually con-
vened legislature, which had already taken steps for
establishing schools and churches — even going so far
as to make ordinances against luxury.

The first negro slaves came in a Dutch ship in 1619
— a cargo fraught with curse to America. The com-
pany which nominally owned the colony was already
(1621) compelled to surrender its right to make laws
excepting with the consent of the colonial legislature.
The English common law was declared that of Vir-
ginia, and this happy state of political security was the
means of attracting a steady stream of excellent new-
comers, not merely from the moliier country, but from
Germany, France, Poland, and wherever tyranny
drove men away from home.

Virginia was a total failure from the standpoint of
the chartered company which foimdcd it, for the suc-
cess of that company could be measured only by the
dividends of sharc-hohlcrs. In \CyJ4 it was dissolved,
after having spent £150,000 and transported 9,000

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

colonists to Chesapeake Bay. The dissolution of the
company affected, however, only the share-holders, for
the colony itself was both self-governing and self-sup-
porting, and went on flourishing in spite of all vicis-
situdes of the English Crown at home, and colonial
troubles occasioned by Indians and other plagues.

In 1620 came a colonial cargo from England, like-
wise under license of a '* chartered "' company, but, no
less than Virginia, resolved to govern itself. The little
Mayflower reached the shores of Massachusetts Bay
on November 11, 1620, and was permitted to remain
there, although the King would give them no charter,
and accident had driven them beyond the limits of the
Virginia Company, which had originally granted them
right of settlement. They survived the winter, at least
forty-nine did, out of the one hundred. At one time all
but seven were laid low on the sick-bed, and there were
hardly strong men enough to bury the dead. For a
whole year they were there alone, a little spark of hu-
manity that seemed momentarily at the point of being
stamped out.

In November of 1621 arrived the first relief-ship,
bringing fifty more English. From the outset they
governed themselves completely. The commercial
company from whom they held their title did all in
their power to extract dividends out of this community
— but with scant success. The development of the
community was very slow — in ten years it had but a
population of three hundred all told, for that portion
of New England was not attractive to the agricultu-
rists, nor to anyone else who sought in a colony more
than what the Puritans did.

[ 268 ]

ENGLISH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA

But in 1629 things took a turn for the better, Massa-
chusetts Bay became a self-governing company by
Royal Charter of Charles L, and thenceforth com-
menced to attract emigration. In 1630 arrived 1,500
colonists. In 1634 there were 4,000 whites in Massa-
chusetts, scattered over twenty villages. From now on
the progress of New England was uninterrupted, the
parent colony soon furnishing the means of settling
farther and farther inland and westward, until the Puri-
tans came in conflict with the Dutch on the Hudson
River and made their occupation so insecure and
profitless, that when finally (in 1664) the English flag
was hoisted over New York, the transfer occasioned
no bloodshed. On the contrary, the Dutchmen re-
mained for the most part contented with the new order
of things, for under it they enjoyed freedom of worship
and still ampler freedom of trade with their neighbors.
We must not forget that, although from the outset
the English in North America enjoyed practical if not
nominal self-government, the impulse to colonial vent-
ures was given by large privileged or " Chartered "
Companies, which anticipated, even though they did
not often realize, handsome dividends from the taxes
they intended laying on colonial industry. There was
much lobbying at the court of King James and of
Charles I. for gifts of land in the new world, and (liosc
chronically impecunious monarchs were not loalh lo
raise money by tlie granting of favors that cost thoni
nothing but a piece of parcbnicnl. I'orluuatfly for the
sturdy men that settled these tracts, their aristocratic
jandh^rds had so much to do wilh lighting contlicting
claims in the law conrts ;il home and willi raising
[ 2('V I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

money for necessary administration, that they were
forced to neglect the internal affairs of their respective
colonies for a long time.

It is not my purpose to detail here the history of
English occupation in North America — merely to
trace an outline and to point out that from the first
occupation of the colonies, which subsequently be-
came the thirteen Independent States of 1776, the dif-
ferent communities, while pretty constantly quarrel-
ling, if not fighting, among themselves, were generally
united in resenting the slightest infringement of their
chartered rights by the mother country. The privi-
leged companies which had originally organized for
the purpose of exploiting them, one by one found the
task unprofitable, went into liquidation, or retired from
active control. By the opening of the seventeenth
century the various colonies had already shown that
they understood their joint as well as their several in-
terests: and, though no union was made on paper, the
representatives had already met to confer upon mat-
ters of common colonial welfare.

The West Indies were geographically too remote
to act in common with the colonies properly called
American: but, as they were founded at about the
same time, and organized the same forms of self-gov-
ernment, they had their share in spreading the spirit
of colonial independence which culminated in 1776.

Barbados, for instance, was granted in 1624 to a
court favorite, but long before that it had been settled
by independent Englishmen, who governed them-
selves and proved capable of taking care of their inter-
ests, even to repelling invasions of Spaniards or French.
[ 270 I

ENGLISH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA

To-day little Barbados, no bigger than the Isle of
Wight, has the densest population of any country in
the world, and affords a cheering picture of white
man's capacity to conduct a white man's government
in the tropics. For nearly four centuries has that little
tropical islet afforded religious and political hberty,
under a government which not only cared for internal
development, but proved equal to resisting the many
attacks to which it was exposed by the quarrels of the
mother country.

r 27T 1

XXVI

WHEN AMERICANS WERE ENGLISH

*• The Americans are the sons — not the bastards of England ..."
**// is my opinion that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax

upon the colonies. . . ."

** I rejoice that America has resisted. . . ."

" You cannot conquer America. . . ." — Speeches ^/"Lord

Chatham relative to the American Revolution.

Settlements in Virginia, Maryland, New England — Love of Local
Liberty — English Tradition

FROM the settlement of Virginia, in 1607, to
the peace between England and France, in
1763, the colonial power of England developed
almost uninterruptedly in almost every portion of the
globe. By conquest she had secured Canada and
India, but by the free enterprise of individual settlers
she had become the mistress of other lands many times
more valuable than all the wealth of the Indies, to say
nothing of the Canada of that day. But this great
power encouraged, at the Court of George III., a spirit
dangerous to English liberty — a spirit congenial to a
king essentially German in his distrust of representa-
tive government; a spirit that counted national
greatness by the number of battalions in the field
rather than by the happiness of his average citizen.
George III. was not the man to understand why Eng-
[ ^7^ ]

WHEN AMERICANS WERE ENGLISH

lish troops could in a short campaign conquer India
and Canada, yet be baffled by colonial militia in Massa-
chusetts, Barbados, and Virginia — he was hopelessly
incapable of understanding the character of the people
over whom, for their punishment, Providence had sent
him to rule.*

In the early career of the American colonies the
English settlers felt socially, religiously, and politically
as Englishmen in England. They had no newspapers
of their own, no towns worth mentioning, and no po-
litical interest that extended further than defending
their settlements from Indians and securing good
prices for their products. For the first generation or
two, while the colonists were mainly English-born, the
settlers of Barbados or Virginia were as keenly alive
to the " home " questions of the day as though their
plantations lay in Devonshire or Yorkshire. The
cavalier of England remained a cavalier in the new
world, and the war between the Stuarts and the Par-
liamentary party was waged with but scant mitigation
on the other side of the Atlantic. When the head of
Charles I. fell in the lap of Cromwell, the act was re-
sented in the new world with varying degrees of spirit.
In Barbados the g(jvcninient of the Commonwealth
was defied by an armed (icmonstration, and the Vir-
ginians at once proclaimed Charles II. their king —
even going so far as to send a special committee to
invite him from luirope that he might found the

* " I'lir l.i raisoii incmc ([110 nous iivoiis |)ii juKcr cclti; nalidii (An}j;le-
tf-rrc) (!<• jiliis prrs, nous somrm^s Ics picmirrs A luliiiiriT In ilaiivoyiiiicc,
riialiilrlr, la u'liacilr (1(; son ^^oiivcriifini-nt, I'csprit <lViilft|)rise ct
>rinilialiv(.- Iiaidic <U: son |il-u[iIc, la soliilaiilL- dv scs I'lls, (|iii Ini loni nno
ani(; nalionalir cj^alc A amunc autre ilans la liunnc (•(inunc ilans la
nuiuvuisc lurlunc." — [C'ojoni-'l Monlcil, iSijij, Kcvuc llclnJonmdauc. J

I ^7.^ I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

"kingdom" of Virginia! His lot might have been
more tolerable than that of the Portuguese incum-
bents of the Brazilian throne, but hardly such as to
satisfy his monarchical pretensions.

Judging by the light of subsequent history, it is
fair to assume that had this invitation been then ac-
cepted, there would have been two headless Stuarts
instead of one.

As time passed, however, the American colonies
along the Atlantic coast realized, with sadness and
some anger, that they had as little to hope from one
dynasty as another; that the caprice of a king is but
little more harmful than the ignorance or indifit'erence
of a parliament, and that in politics, as in private life,
the absent are usually adjudged in the wrong.

The government of Cromwell confirmed all the
chartered liberties of the colonies; but in 1651 was
passed a navigation act which aroused universal colo-
nial resentment, in that it forbade the Americans from
trading in other than English ships to and from Eng-
land. This measure was aimed especially at the Dutch,
who at that time did the carr>^ing trade more effi-
ciently and at lower rates than the mother country.
In Virginia there was much complaint, because, while
the cost of carriage increased, the price of tobacco de-
creased.

This Navigition Act of Cromwell was, however, so
mild an infringement of colonial interest compared with
what was enacted by Charles II. on his accession, to
say nothing of the measures enacted by James II., that
even the most loyal of Virginians realized that their
commercial and political salvation lay no longer in
[ 274 ]

WHEN AMERICANS WERE ENGLISH

petitions to Whitehall, but in their own cunning, if
not strength.

The first measure of Charles II. on his accession (in
1660) was to forbid any alien from transacting busi-
ness in the colonies. In 1663 no produce was allowed
to enter the colonies excepting in English ships. In
1672 America was forbidden to manufacture any ar-
ticle that might compete with English industry.

Here we see the beginning of that narrowest of all
mercantile systems which regarded the colony simply
as an estate to be exploited without reference to the
interests of the colonists themselves.

This system reproduced much that was most objec-
tionable in the Spanish system, with far less justifica-
tion; for the American colonies had settled them-
selves without cost to the mother country and asked
not even military protection.

With the Stuarts an end was put to religious tolera-
tion in Virginia, and as for New England, already in
1634, Archbishop Laud took into his own hands the
supervision of all emigrants for Massachusetts, per-
mitting none to go thither excepting such as were
" orthodox." *

But these measures did not prevent the steady de-
velopment of the colonies in population and wealth,
for they were to a large extent modified in America,
if not completely ignored. Contraband trade flour-
ished, and the ICnglish riovcrnnicnt was so much oc-

• I-aud was Ijorii in 1^7.^, and (ictapit.itiMl, by order of tlio I.<>n^; I'arliii-
mcnt, in 1645, In I<<.1,< lie was niailc An lil)isli(>|) of CanlcrlnMy. mid by
his r(:a<liiicss to siipiiort llir royal measures in opposition to tliosc of llic
pcopii; Ik; (.-ariied the (^raliliide ol (he Sliiails -niucll US Uisiuuri-k in lS6j
curucd the gratitude ol William I. of I'mssiu.

I 275 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

cupied with European afifairs that its efforts in America
were never backed by adequate means for their en-
forcement.

As early as 1670, Virginia, which sixty years before
had been on the point of being abandoned as worth-
less, counted 38,000 white inhabitants with 2,000 black
slaves. The militia force numbered 8,000, and was
called out each month for drill, while her frontiers
were protected by five forts mounting thirty pieces of
artillery.

In spite of what had happened, the royalist senti-
ment still survived until Charles II. alienated his last
supporters in Virginia when he handed over this re-
public, as he might have done an English farm, to a
couple of his personal friends. Such crass political
blundering as this was required — such cruel indif-
ference to human rights, before our loyal English an-
cestors in America even whispered about political
independence !

Indeed, in those days the torch of liberty, after
kindling freedom on the American seaboard, had al-
most expired in the land of its origin; and while Eng-
lishmen of New England, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
and Virginia w'ere perfecting parliamentary govern-
ment and broadening themselves in the practice of
political and religious toleration, the people of Eng-
land were apparently sinking to a lower social and
moral plane under the influence of a statecraft mod-
elled after the pattern of Versailles.

Mar}'land, which had been founded in 1632 by Lord
Baltimore, enacted (in 1649) " that no person profes-
sing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from henceforth be

[ 27(> ]

WHEN AMERICANS WERE ENGLISH

any ways troubled in respect of his or her religion " —
an act almost unique of its kind and as startling to
Europe, in that century, as was in 1776 the Declara-
tion that all men were politically equal. It was re-
served to Maryland, founded by a Roman Catholic,
to be the first American colony, perhaps the first of
Christian States, in which all Christian sects were not
merely tolerated, but cordially welcomed.

Quakers fled thither from New England, and al-
ready in the same year (1649) ^ hundred Puritans set-
tled in Maryland under Lord Baltimore's protection, to
escape the High Church persecution of Virginia.

Persecution was the order of the day. Scarcely any
liberal-minded man was so radical as to desire its aboli-
tion — but there were many who desired that it should
be done on a democratic basis. They stoutly resented
the arbitrary persecution of a king or an archbishop,
but maintained with equal stoutness the right of the
people's representatives to pass measures of intoler-
ance. Thus the Puritans of New England, organized
on the basis of universal suffrage and with officials
elected only for a single year, enacted measures which
to a Quaker, a High Church man, to say nothing of
a Roman Catholic, appeared monstrous. But while
the New England statute-books bristled with savage
penalties for those who transgressed a narrow tlicolog-
ical creed, let us not forget that the Puritan applied
this law to himself and invited no man to suffer with
him — nor did he go out of his way to inconvenience
those who preferred oilier ways of salvation. There
was no Inquisition in New I'Jigland, IIktc was no
pretension of piuiisliing mere heresy that was not linked
I V7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

with an overt act contrary to the statute-book. There
were isolated cases of hardship where fanaticism
availed itself of a legal pretext for the purpose of in-
dulging in cruelty; but these cases resembled those,
happily few, which marred the annals of Queen Eliza-
beth. The law was severe, but it was rarely applied,
excepting when obtrusively challenged by such as
sought the notoriety of martyrdom. It is a favorite
subject for contemporary humor — the intolerance of
our Puritan ancestors while professing liberty for
themselves — it is a theme particularly congenial to
churchmen with a leaning toward the Papacy. But
such jibes can have but scant currency so long as our
libraries preserve authentic records of what was
achieved by the men who first settled New England.

[ 278]

XXVII

WHY ENGLAND LOST HER AMERICAN
COLONIES

" The most ominous political sign in the United States to-day is
the growth of a sentiment which either doubts the existence of an
honest man in public office or looks on him as a fool for not seizing
his opportunities. " — Hen ry George, " Progress and Poverty, ' '
p. 483.

Tyranny of English Colonial Administration before America Re-
belled — Contrast with Present-Day Relations

AT the time of the English Revolution of 1688,
when William III. ascended the throne, Eng-
land's American colonies contained about 200,-
000 white men of overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon char-
acter. These were being daily taught that it mattered
little to them whether the government at home was
republican or monarchical, Protestant or Catholic,
high-church or low-church. Whig or Tory. The
Crown was perpetually in need of money to meet the
cost of foreign wars, and public sentiment had not
been erlucatcd to the point of regarding the English-
man of Virgiin'a or Massachusetts as in all respects
the peer of the Englishman al home.

Tf)vvard the end of the seventeenth eentnry, the Eng-
lish (lovernnient applied to its colonial trade political
maxims even less liberal llian those wliieli the Stuarts

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

had countenanced. In 1696 American trade was lim-
ited to ships built in England or the colonies, owned
and manned by Englishmen. The colonists were for-
bidden to trade otherwise than with the mother coun-
try. In 1699, the weavers of England secured an act
of Parliament which forbade the colonies shipping
wool to the mother country, or even from one colony
to the other. The export of lumber was limited. Trees
suitable for masts could not be felled without royal
permission. In 1719 Parliament forbade the Ameri-
can colonies to manufacture articles of iron excepting
nails, staples, and the like. It was frankly proclaimed
in the Lower House that to permit manufacturing in
America was to encourage separation from the mother
country ; and while it was found practically impossible
wholly to suppress iron-works in America, the manu-
facture was checked as much as possible, and a large
tax was raised on the export of manufactured iron.

This must be strange reading for many of our poli-
ticians who have persistently advocated heavy taxes
on imports for the sake of protecting so-called '' infant
industries."

Manufacturing of all kinds was deliberately stopped
in America, in so far as the Government could secure
respect for its laws. Fortunately this left plenty of
room for contraband operations and postponed the
day of reckoning. Had England, toward the end of
the seventeenth century, been able to enforce against
the colonies her own acts of Parliament with the thor-
oughness of modern Germany or even Russia, no
doubt the Revolutionary War of 1776 would have
taken place three-quarters of a century earlier.
[ 280 ]

WHY ENGLAND LOST HER COLONIES

In 1 716 there were already five printing presses and
three newspapers in Boston, and these openly defied
the attempted censorship of the mother country. The
history of America proceeds from now on in a con-
stant repetition of efforts at encroachment on the part
of the Crown, evasion and defiance on the side of the
colonists. As England under the Georges became
more blindly monarchical, the Americans became more
and more conscious of their strength, and urged with
even more emphasis than before their right to self-
government. The bad blood existing between New
England and the mother country was the principal
reason why Canada remained so long in French hands,
for the men of Massachusetts could not become enthu-
siastic in military enterprises which promised only the
strengthening of an unfriendly military power in their
neighborhood.

As events turned out, however, the session of
Canada to England in 1763 relieved the thirteen colo-
nics at once from large military expenses which had
been hitherto necessary in order to resist French at-
tacks. From 1763 on, the political thinkers in
America realized that the field of their operations was
no longer limited by French military posts, which cut
off their Hinterland and held them prisoners between
the Alleghanies and the Atlantic. Henceforth an
American combination against England meant the
whole of North America from Labrador to the CJuif
of Mexico, and as far west as man then had knowl-
edge of.

In that Seven Years War which closed in I7<)3,
Americans had fought side by side with Briti.sh rcgu-
[ 281 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

lars, had seen British generals exhibit gross miHtary
incapacity. George Washington and the other Ameri-
cans who in 1775 took up arms against England, were
men w'ho had learned to be soldiers in a school of
arnls that experience had proved to be — at least on
American soil — more valuable than that which pro-
duced the generals of George III.

One cannot read the history of England, in her rela-
tions to America during the latter half of the eigh-
teenth century, without being on every page reminded
of South Africa and the spread of Boer influence be-
tween 1896 and 1900.

Not to follow out in detail what I have already
touched upon elsewhere, it is sufficient to refer to the
almost universal ignorance which prevailed in Eng-
land regarding the Boers at the opening of the South
African War in 1899. A general commanding Eng-
lish troops loudly proclaimed in September that he
would eat his Christmas dinner in Pretoria! Yet
Christmas of 1900 found the war still going on !

Even English historians now freely chronicle the
manner in which official England in the days of George
III. spoke of Americans as cowards, incapable of or-
ganization and resistance. There were liberal-minded
men then who courageously defended colonial liberties,
but their voices were drowned in the general howl of
the ignorant and the interested. American public men
in those days knew the mother country intimately —
her strength and her weakness. Englishmen, on the
contrary, knew of America only so much as the aver-
age share-holder cares to learn about a country in
which one of his many investments happens to be.
[ 282 ]

WHY ENGLAND LOST HER COLONIES

Great changes have taken place since then, never
so signally emphasized as in the year 1900, when the
colonies of Australia sent their delegates to the mother
country to discuss ways and means of closer political
intercourse. They came as honored guests of the na-
tion; were made the occasion of countless flattering
functions, and at the hands of the Government were
treated not as colonial suppliants, but as ambassadors
of sovereign communities.

To-day English colonies bare their arms for fight
in the cause of Old England, and even Americans have
produced a pendant to the Monroe Doctrine in the sig-
nificant aphorism that " blood is thicker than water."

In this year English and American sailors and sol-
diers are fighting side by side in China. In 1898, Ad-
miral Dewey found that when the war with Spain
broke out, the only hand extended to wish him God
speed, when starting on his desperate mission to
Manila, was that of the English sailor.

Now let us travel back to the days when in the
American colonies political life produced public men
great in their generation and greater still when meas-
ured by the shrunken standards of our latter-day Con-
gressmen.

When Benjamin Franklin went to England as an
Englishman, demanding the rights of Englishmen,
asking no strange favor, but appealing to the Govern-
ment of his King for justice according to ancient char-
ters and many generations of prescription, ho and
others on the same errand of peace were treated by the
court, the aristocracy, nicnihcrs of the ( Io\c'i luncnt,
and the majority of politicians as contcniplibk- agita-
I ^«3 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

tors unfit for association on terms of equality with the
so-called society of the metropolis.

England was drunk with the glory of her past wars;
her power had made her Wind; money easily made
had corrupted the sources of legislation; ignorance
and indifference had done the rest.

Seven long years did the thirteen colonies fight the
mother country to establish a principle which has
proved a precious boon to every British colony since
that time. The War of Independence closed in 1783,
but in 1812 another three years' war broke out, which
but proved once more that even the best British regu-
lars are but poor stuf¥ against men of English breeding
fighting for principle. It took these ten years of good,
hard knocks to teach England the lesson which to-day
makes her the colonial mistress of the world.

Canada was the first to profit by the surrender of
Yorktown, but each colony in turn felt the effect of
this blow, and now, wherever the English flag floats
throughout the world, it represents either a self-gov-
erning Anglo-Saxon community or at least one in
which the natives enjoy as much of self-government
as it is safe to accord.

[ 284]

XXVIII

A SUCCESSFUL TROPICAL REPUBLIC IN
THE WEST INDIES

** This capacity for adequate organization has been the key-note
of distinction between the Democracy of our race and all the Democ-
racies by which it has been preceded.^'' — George Parkin,
"Imperial Federation," p. 2.

Barbados — A Tropical Republic — Declares Charles II. King —
Opposes Cromwell — Economic Development

BARBADOS lies well within the tropics— a lit-
tle pin-prick on the fringe of the Caribbean Sea.
Her area is so small that on the mainland it
would represent but a big plantation. For compara-
tive purposes let us say that it is about the size of
the Isle of Wight. One can walk clean across it at its
broadest point between luncheon and dinner, and the
population is so dense that some of it threatens to drip
over into the water. No country of the world has so
many people to the square inch as this happy little isl-
and — the healthiest, the richest, the best governed —
a microsco|)ic mctroj)olis of the West Indies. If there
is any truth in tlif maxim, Happy is llic conntrx that
has JU) history, no hctirr illnslratioii of it can bo olTt'iH'd
than this tr()|)ical outpost of Anglo-Saxon liberty- the
most eastern or windward island of llie Spanish M.iin.
According to all orlh«»dox political economy, its enor-

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

mous population of over i,ooo to the square mile
should be unhappy as compared to the others where
land is to be had for the asking; but Mr. Malthus finds
few followers in Barbados amidst a population which
sees on all sides colonies prospering in proportion as
population increases. Cause and effect are here con-
fused, as in most political problems, but the West Ind-
ian can make as good an argument as Mr. IMalthus on
the subject of over-population.

On the occasion of my visit to this interesting island
what struck me most forcibly was the evidence of Brit-
ish tenacity in matter of social custom. In the midst
of a broiling tropical noontide, the social leaders of the
capital moved to church clad in the conventional top-
hat, stiff collar, black frock-coat and patent leather
shoes, enduring fifty-two times a year the martyrdom
which many of their enterprising ancestors in the age
of Elizabeth compressed into a single sufficiency when
they fell foul of the Spanish Inquisition at La Guayra.
The " Bim," as the Barbadian is affectionately called
for short, is an Englishman through and through, ex-
cepting where he has rubbed off something from the
Yankee. The clean streets, comfortable houses, soHd
public buildings, effective sanitary inspection, local
policing — all these reflect an English ancestry, with
little admixture.

The governor of this little toy empire holds garden
parties and sits in state quite as grandly as if he pre-
sided at Calcutta or Singapore. Tommy Atkins swag-
gers about the streets with the same easy indifference
to latitude and longitude that he exhibits at Cape
Town or Hong-Kong, and the gorgeous black privates
[ 286 ]

TROPICAL REPUBLIC IN WEST INDIES

of the West India Regiment, in their zouave outfit,
show that the Englishman respects the black man as
a man if not as a brother.

There is a railway in Barbados — it must have been
a tight squeeze to get it in; and electric trams, and
one or two huge American hotels on the beach, where
families come from all over the Spanish Main to recruit
their health at this Narragansett of the tropics.

The negroes are the biggest and strongest in the
West Indies, and they all must work, for there is no
waste Hinterland where they can get their dinner from
the shake of a cocoa-nut tree. They are English
through and through in language, church, and custom,
though as to apparel a few yards of cotton print with
a string around the middle seems enough for practical
purposes.

When the citizen of Barbados, who represents three
centuries of English blood, Creole from the days of
King James, reads in the papers that Anglo-Saxons
should not acquire tropical territory because the white
man cannot thrive except in the temperate zone, he
smiles in pity and says: " What fools of men sit in
Parliament! Yet they pretend to govern us! "

For Barl)ados is a republic, in practice if not in
theory. Tropical republics arc scarce — the only other
one of which I have personal knowledge is Natal, on
the cast ccjast of vSouth Africa, which is not only one
of the hottest of luigland's colonies, but at the same
time one of the healthiest and best governed of any in
Africa.

The history lA I'arbados runs back into obscm'C
times, when only Si)ain was acknowledged in l!ic West
I 287 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Indies and those who invaded her territory did so at
the risk of the gallows or the Inquisition.

Officially Barbados was settled in 1625 under a royal
grant, by forty English emigrants, one of whom was
the son of John Winthrop, afterward Governor of
Massachusetts.

But, as in the case of New England, the official ac-
tion of the mother country w^as resented by the colo-
nists, and did more harm than good. It had no doubt
been already, for many years before the official grant,
frequented by Englishmen who sought here freedom
from political and religious interference. There w^as
here also a large admixture of the freebooting element
that made Martinique and San Domingo nurseries of
French liberty long after self-government had disap-
peared in France. The civil and religious dissensions
in England sent refugees to Barbados, as they did to
Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia, and from the
very outset these people, while mainly royalist refu-
gees, developed a characteristically English capacity
for taking care of themselves.

Already in 1636 there were 6,000 Englishmen in
the island, and successive governors complained that
these were animated by a determined disposition to
have their own w^ay. The island prospered in spite of
the fact that it w-as given away by the English Crown
to court favorites and treated as a plantation to be ex-
ploited. Fortunately there were rival claimants, and
these exhausted themselves while the colony itself
practically conducted its own affairs.

An idea of this little island's strength and public
spirit may be gathered from the fact that when Charles
[ 288 ]

TROPICAL REPUBLIC IN WEST INDIES

I. lost his head, it was the only colony whose resistance
to the Commonwealth caused Cromwell any great
trouble. Charles II. was proclaimed king by the loyal
*' Bims," the militia was called out, and not till 1652
was the great Protector able to assert his authority
in Barbados. The adjustment was characteristic of
Anglo-Saxons. Each party was drawn up ready to
fight, but when the British " Bims " were convinced
that the struggle was hopeless and that in capitulating
they would receive honorable terms, they disbanded
their forces and turned once more to their daily rou-
tine.

Barbados has never permitted a foreign enemy on
its soil. When Pere Labat visited there at the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century, he studied particularly
the military condition of the island with a view to
French invasion. He was himself a skilful engineer
and had constructed some forts in the French islands.
He describes Barbados as a magnificent island to
plunder, admired the wealth of the planters, and, above
all, the large proportion of white men trained to mili-
tary service. He found forts and batteries at many
points on the shores, and congratulated himself upon
having succeeded in stealing a map of the place from
his host. This Dominican priest, whose book on the
West Indies remains to-day delightful reading, was an
essentially ()ractical man, and returned from Barbados
with no desire to venture an at trick upon that place.

When Cromwell attackcil Jamaica in if)55, ho se-
cured 3.500 vdhnitcers from I'arbados .alone, .and, be-
tween U^AT, and \(^S7< '' ^^''^ estimated th.at at least
12,000 white men U-ft the isl.aiul to settle .and develop
1 2H<) I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

other parts of the West Indies, or the North American
colonies.

Just one hundred years before the Declaration of
Independence at Philadelphia, Barbados had 50,000
whites and 100,000 negro slaves.

It is late in the day to discuss negro slavery, but,
throughout the British West Indies as well as Virginia,
it is worth noting that the legalizing of the slave-trade
was followed by a gradual diminution of the white
population and a disproportion between the numbers
of white and black to a degree which in several cases,
as in Jamaica, endangered the existence of the white
settlers and made representative government more dif-
ficult, if not impossible.

After slavery had taken deep root, and when plan-
tations had come to resemble manufactories devoted
to a single crop; when white labor had wholly dis-
appeared in consequence of slave competition, then
many people agreed that slave labor was absolutely
essential to successful tropical agriculture, and that
black emancipation meant colonial ruin. There was
much plausibility in this, in the early years of this
century, when the abolition of slavery was agitated in
England, but it was negro slavery itself that created
the very plantation system which was only profitable
when worked on a large scale by negro gangs.

Sugar — that crop which has since monopolized the
interest of the West Indies and been the prime justi-
fication of slavery for two centuries and more, was only
introduced into the island in 1640. In 1643 there were
18,600 able-bodied white men in Barbados, of whom
8,300 were proprietors, and only 6,400 negroes. The
[ 290 ]

TROPICAL REPUBLIC IN WEST INDIES

mere mention of this number allows us to draw the
inference that white labor was successfully employed
here as it was in the early days of Martinique and Vir-
ginia — and would have continued to make the colonies^
prosper but for the greed of gold which permitted
Christian nations to enslave Africans, and then sell
them as human machines — I will not say as beasts of
burden.

In our day we have laws protecting animals against
ill usage at the hands of their masters — in those days,
the black man on a Jamaica plantation had less protec-
tion from the common law than has to-day the cab
horse of London ! Black labor has so thoroughly dis-
possessed that of the Anglo-Saxon in the cotton, to-
bacco, and sugar-growing sections of America, that
we are apt to think this state of things natural and
unalterable. But from the experience of our English
ancestors I am inclined to think that if, by some happy
magic, the negro should suddenly return to his native
Africa, the white man would develop his tropical
American territories more satisfactorily.

In the olden days colonization was much assisted by
a system which permitted a man who had got into the
clutch of the law, through debt or other misfortune,
to buy his release through personal service — such a
man worked after the fashion of one who, nowadays,
labors to pay back the money that has been advanced
for his passage from the old world to New York. The
law forbids it, but human nature linds means of evad-
ing such legislation.

Under that old syslcin llionsands of slout while men
came to llie new world wilh (heir families, ami alter

r .•.„ I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

serving a term of years, were pronounced once more
restored to their civil rights and given land to culti-
vate. This system, like every other, was open to
abuse; but under proper inspection was eminently use-
ful to all concerned — the mother country, the colony,
and, chief of all, the white emigrant himself.

The home government simply handed the man over
to an agent for the colonies, and was thus, by a stroke
of the pen, relieved of all further responsibility.

But this system received a check in 1776, when the
American War broke out, and the thirteen colonies,
one and all, forbade the sending of any more indented
or apprenticed whites to their shores. This action of
America gave a still stronger impulse to the African
slave-trade by increasing the demand for plantation
hands — a consequence little dreamed of by our Puritan
liberators.

One consequence of the negro in America is that
he has retarded the use of labor-saving machinery, or
of any machinery requiring intelligent handling. The
smaller the price of labor, the less importance is at-
tached to machinery. It is not in Russia, but in Min-
nesota, that agriculture develops labor-saving imple-
ments — it is among highly educated people only that
highly ef^cient machinery is profitable. People who
are well paid with ten cents a day cannot rise to an
appreciation of a modern reaping-machine — or even
an American plough. A Chinaman of the interior can-
not understand why a Massachusetts machinist can
earn $5 a day and turn from his machine cotton stuff
which under-sells stuff made in Canton by girls earn-
ing five cents a day.

[ 292 ]

TROPICAL REPUBLIC IN WEST INDIES

Although the Great Wall of China was built by
forced labor, it is more than probable that to-day an
American contractor would undertake to build it over
again with free labor for less money than it originally
cost. The reason for this is, that only high-priced
mechanics can be trusted with high-priced machinery
— and a good machine can underbid the best of
slaves.

The white man has never yet shown great taste for
long and arduous labor in the tropics — such as hoe-
ing a field of cotton, for instance. We have never
known it done, for the mere reason that the white man
is more valuable as a superintendent of black labor
than as a single hand in the furrow.

White sailors do their work in the tropics as they do
in the north; and soldiers fight as well in India as in
Northern China. If we hear of excessive mortality in
hot climates among v^^iite troops, we can generally
trace it to bad habits of living, to inexperience on the
part of the officers, to the unsanitary state of the coun-
try — not merely to the heat. America is essentially
the land of labor-saving machinery, for the reason that
in the northern part, at least, labor has been intelligent
and consequently expensive. In England, where, on
the contrary, domestic service has been comparatively
cheap and unintelligent, the American is struck by
the absence of labor-saving contrivances. The conse-
quence is that an English house requires about one-
third more servants than a corresponding om- in
America. Such common things as speaking tubes,
dumb waiters, electric lights, gas stoves, hot and cold
water on tap in every room, balh-tubs properly litlcd
[ 293 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

up — all these came to England long after they had be-
come commonplace in America. I can recall many
mansions in England where none of these things are
yet known — where guests dress for dinner by the light
of two dim candles; where a little tin bath-tub is
brought into one's room along with two jugs of water;
where on cold evenings the ladies huddle about the
open fire with shawls, because the machinery for heat-
ing would be too complicated for the forces obtainable
in the neighborhood.

It is fair to say that many a wealthy English
nobleman has fewer comforts in his palace than the
average New England professor, whose income rep-
resents but a tithe of that enjoyed by his Old World
kinsman.

All industry in the West Indies is at a low ebb be-
cause sugar fetches but little on the market, and the
planters have depended too much on that one crop.
They have had their day of abundance, and the pres-
ent generation is paying the penalty. In the good old
days of slavery there was no need of intelligence in
the running of a plantation. The price of sugar was
such that any machinery was good enough, and plant-
ers could lounge in London while overseers looked
to the estates and remitted fat dividends at regular
intervals.

But times changed, and the emancipation of slaves
(1834) diminished profits. Then the planters bor-
rowed money and hoped for better times. But the
times did not improve, so they mortgaged their es-
tates and kept on expecting better things that never
arrived.

I 294 ]

TROPICAL REPUBLIC IN WEST INDIES

Finally, they had spent all their capital, had no
money with which to buy improved machinery, had
lost the energy that characterized their ancestors, and
got more and more involved in financial embarass-
ment, until once wealthy plantations were abandoned
to wild beasts — as any traveller can testify.

Parliament has been much importuned to give
pecuniary relief, and latterly has done so — but all such
measures are unwise. It is not the business of govern-
ment to take money out of the pockets of the thrifty
and give it to the unsuccessful. If the West Indies
are depressed at present it is largely because they have
latterly been looking to the Government for relief, in-
stead of depending entirely upon themselves. When
Government has removed all hampering restrictions
to the colonial development of the islands, it has done
enough — and if after that the colonists cannot earn
a living, then they had better abandon sugar and grow
something that pays better.

The West Indies need no pauper legislation — they
need but the wholesome tonic of healthy competition
to revive prosperity. Men who own land should be
compelled to work it themselves — not leave it to
agents. Government should be simplified to the great-
est possible extent, in order to introduce more econ-
omy of administration. The incompetent planters
should be allowed to go into bankruptcy and drop
away as soon as possible, and leave room for a new
generation of more enterprising and bettor ecim'ppi'il
husbandmen.

If Ciovcrnnicnt wislies to iiili-rfrre willionl doing
much harm, let it limit itself to the building of good
f 29.S I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

roads, and the fostering of communication between
the islands; the establishing of cheaper telegraph
rates; of savings banks; the simplification of land
transfer; the encouragement of peasant proprietors
among the blacks; the abolition of land speculation.

[ 296 1

XXIX

FROM MY DIARY IN BRITISH GUIANA

*• The momentum of past events, the spontaneous impulses of the
mass of a tiation . . . all have more to do with the progress
of human affairs than the deliberate views of even the most deter-
mined and far-sighted of our individual leaders,''* — John
MoRLEY, "Cromwell."

January 2^, i8po. In the Court Room at Gcorgctoivn,
Demcrara.

ON a high platform sat the judge, William An-
thony Musgrave Sherriff, by name, in gorgeous
crimson robe but without wig. Immediately
to his left was the witness-stand, and immediately in
front of his desk, but below it, sat the Clerk of the
Court, a handsome and intelligent-looking mulatto,
who had passed his legal examination at the British
Guiana bar, and is at present writing a book upon the
law and practice in this colony. This interesting clerk,
M. E. Q. V. Abraham, speaks highly of the Dutch law
in vogue here, as being vastly simpler and more ra-
tional than what is practised in London.

Close to the clerk's desk, on the right, is the tabic
where the Crown officers sit in lluir gowns of black,
but minus wigs. I'chind these, on (he right of the
room, arc tables for reporters. On the left of the
Judge are the twelve jurors, as with us, and immcdi-
[ 207 1

' THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

ately in front, behind a central table at which counsel
sit, is the prisoner's dock, behind which again are
seats for about fifty spectators.

The first case was against two blacks, who stood in
the dock charged w'ith having assaulted a merchant
on the street and knocked a walking-stick out of his
hand, with the obvious intention of doing him bodily
harm. The case was clear against one of them, a man
who had been already four times convicted of felony.
The Judge gave him the fullest opportunity of offering
evidence in his behalf, of questioning witnesses, and
of addressing the Court and Jury. This prisoner was
condemned to seven years' hard labor and three years'
subsequent police supervision, and left the room curs-
ing the Judge and growling general malediction. The
other prisoner made a harangue to judge, jury, and
spectators, his eyes bursting with tears, his voice
choked with emotion, his arms and hands waving with
a grace that indicated the triumph of nature over art.
He reviewed his past life, referred to his respectable
family and seven children, his professional duty as
market scavenger, which, he insisted, raised him
above suspicion. But the most grievous weight upon
his spirit appeared to be, not that he was in court on
a charge of larceny or even murder, but that he should
be suspected of affiliating with such a " low " black as
the other prisoner. " My dear good father " — " My
dear good massa judge," were expressions that he
used in appealing to " His Honor," while the jury were
referred to as a group of " My dear good brothers."
His speech flowed as freely as could have been desired
by the most ambitious of stump speakers, and his ar-
[ 298 ]

FROM MY DIARY IN BRITISH GUIANA

gumcnts, even if they lacked coherency, appeared to
fuse together with enough force to carry conviction
to many of his fellow blacks. The jury did not leave
their seat in order to pronounce this one " not guilty "
and convict the other — though my feelings were
mixed when the judge told me later that this same
man whom I had seen acquitted had already served
three terms in jail on similar charges.

The trial left nothing to be desired on the score of
dignity, decency, and fairness. The jury listened at-
tentively and the servants of the court did their work
quietly and efficiently. The room was scrupulously
clean, the attendants well dressed and tidy.

The absence of counsel for the defence would ap-
pear from our standpoint to be unfair to the prisoner,
but as the trial is conducted here, it seemed to me
rather the reverse. The judge does not merely sit as
a dummy to give a verdict after opposing lawyers
have wearied the court with wrangling. He is here
to see fair play. Knowing that the prisoner looks to
the judge for fairness, and not to a lawyer, the bench
assists in bringing out any testimony that may re-
dound to his credit. The Crown prosecutor, in his turn,
docs not seek so much the winning of his case as the
establishment of the truth. The spirit in which the
trial was conducted by judge and prosecuting attorney
appeared to be that of fairness above all, remember-
ing that ninety-nine guiUy men had better escape
rather than one innocent man suffer.

January 26. — T.ast nighl .il dinm r. llu' hostess (Kng-
lisli in birlh and bix-fdini;) Inld me thai hi.'r Iu';dlli was
I -W I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

much the better for living here. This same high praise
for the Guiana climate I had also from the wife of the
Comptroller of Customs, Mrs. Darnley Davis, who told
me she had lived here five years, had never known the
need of medicine, and only once in the life of her three-
year-old daughter had a doctor been called in.

The dinner might have been in New York or Lon-
don for aught that might be called " tropical " about
it. The black men-servants, to be sure, were in white
duck — a very sensible arrangement — but their educa-
tion was distinctly metropolitan. After dinner, on
passing into the drawing-room, we found the floor
cleared for a dance and about fifty guests assembled,
including the three white English officers of the gar-
rison and two mulatto ladies — which latter received
apparently as much attention as the majority of charm-
ing English and white creole girls at the dance. The
two ladies of color were fashionably dressed, and quite
at their ease. I was told that colored people went
into society here, and that one of the mulattos at this
party was engaged to a white merchant of the place.
Her presence at the ball was not resented, as it would
have been in other parts of the West Indies, to say
nothing of the United States.

Henry Bolingbroke, writing in 1807 of George-
town (then called Starbrock), says: "Few weeks pass
without a ball or a concert, the attending of which is,
however, very expensive. A ball and supper cost to
each of the gentlemen subscribers $8, a concert and
ball $12. His ticket also iivtroduces tzvo ladles of color."

" When an European arrives in the West Indies
and gets settled ... he finds it necessary to pro-
[ 300 ]

FROM MY DIARY IN BRITISH GUIANA

vide himself with a housekeeper or mistress. The
choice he has an opportunity of making is various, a
black, a tawny, a mulatto, or a mestee; one of which
can be purchased for £ioo or £150 sterling, fully com-
petent to fulfil all the duties of her station . . ."

This arrangement is not unknown to-day, but it
will disappear when white wives shall have made their
influence felt.

The son of a British bishop, particularly when in
company with his father, may be deemed competent
authority when quoted in regard to the pleasures of
the dance. Henry Nelson Coleridge (in 1825) wrote:
" A ball to our creole girl is more than a ball; it is an
awakener from insensibility, a summoner to society,
an inspirer of motion and thought. Accordingly there
is more artlessness, more passion than is usual with us
in England. The soft dark eyes of a Creole girl seem
to speak such devotion and earnestness of spirit that
you cannot choose but make your partner your sweet-
heart of an hour; there is an attachment between you
which is delightful, and you cannot resign it without
regret."

" She is pale, it is true, but there is a beauty in this
very paleness, and her full yet delicate shape is at once
the shrine and censer of love, whence breathe —

" * The mcllinj,' tliouj^Iit,
The Kiss Ambrosial, and the yielding smile.' "
Etc., etc., etc.

Anthony Trollope has referred to nemernra ns
" The iLlysiuni of the Tropics — llie West Indian liap|)y
I .^01 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

valley of Rasselas — the one true and actual Utopia of
the Caribbean Seas — the Transatlantic Eden."

This master of fiction continues:

" The men of Demerara are never angry and the
women never cross, and life flows on in a perpetual
stream of love, smiles, champagne, and small talk. Ev-
erybody has enough of everything. The only persons
who do not thrive are the doctors "

In the midst of such gorgeous verbiage from slow-
blooded Britons, is it for me to raise questions?

[ 302 ]

XXX

THE WEST INDIES TO-DAY AND TO-
MORROW

"These beautiful West Indian Islands were intended to be homes
for the overflowing numbers of our own race, and the few that have
gone there are being crowded out by the blacks from Jamaica and
the Antilles. — Froude, "The English in the West Indies,"
1898.

Negro, Chinese, East Indians, and Whites — Duty of the Anglo-
Saxon Toward West Indies — Good Government Needed

NOW that English-speaking peoples control
the momentary destinies of the principal isl-
ands of the West Indies, when a canal join-
ing Atlantic and Pacific is about to be constructed
under an Anglo-Saxon protectorate, when, therefore,
we are justified in anticipating an increased European
interest in this part of the world, it is time for us to
treat the West Indies not as isolated appendices of far-
away colonial offkcs, but as a community of common
commercial interests, of almost one language, and to
some extent fitted for self-government. With Cuba
and Porto Kico under the Stars and Stripes, Ilayti in-
dependent, and Jamaica P)ritish, to say nothing of the
large number of small islands cither belonging to Eng-
land or speaking luiglish, there remain but Martinique
and (juadcloupc to rcprcsfiit dccp-rootcd political at-

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

tachment to other than Anglo-Saxon institutions. It
is true that Sweden, Holland, and Denmark are still
represented in the West Indies, but to an extent that
may be ignored.

Hitherto, and up to the moment of negro emanci-
pation (1834), the West India islands were most
precious objects in the eyes of European cabinets, ow-
ing to the high price of sugar. The abominable trade
in slaves enabled planters to make their fortunes and
enrich the mother country besides — to say nothing
of lulling to sleep the popular conscience regarding
treatment of negroes. So full is West Indian history
of crime and bloodshed among its islands, that one
cannot fail to sympathize with Benjamin Franklin, who
could not look upon a lump of sugar without fancying
it to be stained with human blood.

Since negro emancipation, the nations of Europe
have gone almost to the opposite extreme of indiffer-
ence toward these islands; showing conclusively that
such interest as existed was rather on pecuniary than
sentimental grounds.

To-day West Indian matters are apt to be dismissed
from public consideration on the ground that the
white man cannot live there; that the black man alone
is to be the inheritor in this part of the world; that
we don't want any more negro States; and, that, in
short, they are not worth having at any price.

If this view were correct, there would be an end of
the matter, at least for Americans. But it is one based
on a mixture of true and false that must be separated
before we can draw just conclusions. The West Indies
to-day have, in fact, identical interests, but by the
[ 304 ]

WEST INDIES TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

artificial action of jealous governments whose policy
had reference only to the revenues of the home coun-
tries, the different islands have been kept isolated one
from tha other, in a manner prejudicial to their de-
velopment. Thus, the different mother countries,
England, France, Spain, etc., paid heavy subsidies to
steamers plying from France to Martinique, South-
ampton to Barbados, Spain to Havana, etc. The
cost of this service was in many instances a heavy tax
upon the islands themselves. The passengers were
very largely government officials, and the laws were
so framed that the islanders were compelled to ship at
high rates to Europe rather than to better markets
nearer at hand. The West Indies for centuries fur-
nished the strange picture of a country where it was
easier to get passage to Europe 4,000 miles away, than
to the islands of the neighborhood. Even to-day this
system of European subsidy continues, while from one
island to the other the means of intercourse are very
unsatisfactory. This is a relic of that suspicious colo-
nial legislation which forbade colonies trading one
with another for fear of ultimately organizing against
the mother country. England applied this colonial
doctrine to her own colonics in America and the West
Indies for many years, and it was a cardinal principle
in Spain and France as well. To-day, therefore, the
islands of the West Indies, which should regard them-
selves as a Caribbean confederation, with Jamaica as
the natural centre or capital, are virtually strangers to
one another; do ncjt co-operate for common purposes,
but seek lielj) from a far-riw.iy mother country.

This relation is not ii.itur.il. Trade docs not follow
I 305 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the flag in the West Indies. The merchant in those
islands finds his best trade with the great repubhc at
his door, rather than with the Europe whose flag floats
over Government House. The relation of the West
Indies to Europe has been an unnatural one since the
beginning of this century, and has been maintained
largely through national vanity, irrespective of com-
mercial interests. The West Indies are a part of the
American Continent in every essential characteristic,
and no European subsidies or military demonstration
can wholly prevent the persistent daily political and
commercial drift toward the mouth of the Mississippi
and the Hudson.

The expulsion of Spain from Cuba and Porto Rico
is an important step toward the ultimate emancipation
of all the Caribbean islands from European control,
and their final federation, not necessarily as a part of
the United States, but as an American political body
under an Anglo-Saxon Protectorate, and with Home
Rule to such as are fit for it.

Is this Utopian? Can self-government flourish in
the tropics — where negroes largely outnumber the
whites, and where the best sample of negro-govern-
ment is in Hayti, an island whose administration sug-
gests the ethics of a monkey-cage rather than of God's
reasoning creatures?

The present is, indeed, full of discouraging symp-
toms, but these symptoms will become less dangerous
in time if we do our duty toward the inferior races.
The negro controls the West Indies numerically, be-
cause he has been transported thither against his will.
He is to-day no better than he ever has been so far
[ 306 ]

WEST INDIES TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

as intellectual or moral capacity is concerned; he
shows no dangerous tendency toward dominion over
those who are in the minority; on the contrary, he is, in
the West Indies as in Basutoland, essentially an over-
grown child, ready to obey the law of the white man.

Nor is he the only possible dominant factor as a
laboring man. We have found him good in slavery
because of the very qualities that make him bad as a
free citizen.* His very docility and incapacity for
combination kept him a slave for two centuries or
more; and his freedom proceeded not from his own
efforts, but exclusively from a morbid public senti-
ment developed by London and Boston philanthro-
pists. We have habitually regarded the negro as the
only working man of the West Indies and our Gulf
States, merely because no other competitors appeared
to be in the field. But this condition is changing, and
the change is bringing about the gradual effacement of
the black man, just as Italian and Scandinavian immi-
gration has minimized the importance of the Irishman
as a labor factor in New York.

On the occasion of a visit to Natal, in 1896, I found
that already plantation work was practically monopo-
lized, not by the native African whose kraals are on
all sides, but by the imported coolie from Bombay,

*" The industrial opportunities for colored people have been lessen-
ing all the lime (in New York), rind now the sphere of their activities
has become so narrow that il is a wonder that even 35,000 of them can
earn honest livinjjs,

" And (hry do not. Tiic proportion of criminals amonp the ne^jrocs
in New York is alarininj^ly large, and their influence is very dangerous.
The birth-rate among (lie negroes in New York is small an<l the death-
rate is large, being liiiity in a thousan<l, as against nineteen in a thou-
sand for the while impulation."- John (iilmer Speed, Kjoo.

I population of New York propi 1 , i,()i;<),()no. |

I .V>7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

who is paid well for his work; whose sanitary condi-
tion is the subject of government supervision, and who
at the end of his term of years has the option of re-
turning home or of settling in the colony.

On his own ground in tropical Africa, the negro has
been pushed aside by a race of man inferior to him
physically, but superior in qualities that are essential
to success on a sugar plantation. The coolie of the
East Indies is spreading from Natal to other parts of
Africa. Many of them are already settled in the
Transvaal, and when the Cape to Cairo railway is
opened we shall find them up and down the whole
length of the continent, pushing the black man further
and further back into his more congenial jungle.

The East Indian has already made his appearance
in the West Indies — I have seen him in Trinidad and
in British Guiana, and wherever he shows himself it
is as the superior of the negro, not only in trade, but
in the labor of the field as w-ell.

The British East Indies are a human reservoir con-
taining some 250,000,000 mortals more or less subject
to death from starvation at home, and so accustomed
to associate the English Government with justice, that
they do not hesitate to embark for the most distant
plantations provided the British flag is over them.

Close to this great storehouse of human energy is
another with three or four hundred millions of Chinese,
who also show the capacity, as well as the readiness, to
meet the negro on his own ground and beat him out
of the field. As a farmer or a gardener, a coal heaver or
a laundry-man, a nursery-maid or a banker, he is incom-
parable. I have seen Chinamen driving camel-trains
[ 308 ]

WEST INDIES TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

in a blizzard across the frontiers of Manchuria, and
again have I seen the men of the same race speeding
along in the blistering heat of Singapore with huge
baskets of coal for the passing mail-steamers. This
man is already in the West Indies, and when he turns
his attention to small farming in those islands he will
develop there treasures such as he has already brought
to light in California, in Java, and in the Philippines.

The near future will see a brighter picture in the
West Indies. We shall soon have four races on four
different levels of capacity, all useful in the develop-
ment of the islands, but of them all the black will be
the lowest.

The question of government will then become of
still greater importance, for race jealousy will beget
political friction, and government in such cases must
be strong in order to be just.

Already in the West Indies are many communities
of white men trained to self-government. British
Guiana, St. Kitts, Trinidad, Barbados, Antigua, Ja-
maica — these all are a nursery of colonial legislators,
to say nothing of the Danish islands of Santa Cruz
and St. Thomas, whose population is essentially Eng-
lish. The French islands are politically in a less satis-
factory state, because of the large admixture of negro
blood among the so-called whites.

The Spanish islands of Cuba and Porto Rico are
very backwnrd in a political sense, but in those islands
the sjjrcad of education and Anglo-Saxon institutions
may reasonably be expected to produce :\ change for
the bettor.

But, after all, tlic most important consitUration is

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

in regard to the franchise. The West Indies would be
hopelessly ruined if we of the white race, after con-
quering this part of the world and then building up
white colonies through centuries of care, should now
hand them over to be governed by races who have
shown no capacity for administration.

The franchise should be granted very sparingly and
only to such as have a stake in the country, as land-
owners, for instance. The maxim should be empha-
sized that no man should be allowed to vote taxes
unless he himself paid taxes. There may be negroes
who are fit to vote in the United States, and there are
many whites who are very unfit — and it would be well
for us if we could so frame our laws as to exclude the
corrupt or worthless voters of both races. But in the
absence of such laws we must grope our way in the
right direction as well as we can — and at least not
perpetuate on new territory political principles that
have proven mischievous among ourselves.

No man in the'new West India Federation should
vote unless he satisfies reasonable requirements regard-
ing education, property, and general moral character.
Many of the English islands already furnish us good
patterns on which to base a future government — not-
ably Jamaica, Barbados, or British Guiana. The gov-
ernor should be appointed by the Paramount Power,
and this governor should be assisted by a council se-
lected from a list of the most eminent colonists, who
should be appointed for life or during good behavior;
and be in the nature of a Senate.

Then there should be a legislative assembly elected
by the body of qualified electors.
[ 310 ]

WEST INDIES TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Acceptance of office should be compulsory, as also
should be the casting of a vote. No one should be
excused from his political obligation save by the gov-
ernor for sufficient reason. The governor and officials
generally should be paid highly in order to ensure the
best work of the best men — and above all to remove
public servants from the temptation of making money
by indirect means.

The English were the first who adopted the policy
of paying their public servants well, and they did so
after many years of experience in India, when scandal
after scandal warned the home government that a
radical change was necessary.

Spain and Holland both paid their colonial servants
very poorly, and consequently they were badly served.

At this time the United States consular service illus-
trates this proposition.

Throughout the West Indies, as elsewhere, we find
the American consul a man with the shiftless habits of
the "professional politician;" devoid of personal
credit among Americans and despised by the people
of other countries; unable to live respectably on his
salary, and prone to make money by dishonest means;
a man more apt to injure the American sailor by his
assistance than by his ill-will. I have known excep-
tions to this rule — pooi creatures who have jicrsistcd
long in one island because they had come to like it and
had not the energy to try something else. There arc
a few such exceptions — I have run across thcni in 1mi-
rope also — and in China. lUit they are so very scarce
that they may be left on (jne side in such a considera-
tion as this.

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

At the time when the United States is reconstruct-
ing the political affairs of Cuba and Porto Rico, it
would have been of great use to us had we been as-
sisted in this task by a number of officials who were
familiar with West Indian conditions — who had al-
ready served in Cuba, or at least in islands of cor-
responding geographical conditions. This same want
was felt in the Philippines.

As things go, we must improvise our officials as
well as we can. Our first Governor of Cuba is a gen-
eral of volunteers who six months before the war with
Spain was an assistant-surgeon in the army. In a few
years he may learn something of the island and the
people, and then — he may be turned adrift to make
room for another.

The first Military Governor of Havana was an ex-
cellent engineer officer, a graduate of West Point.
Great hopes were entertained of him by those who
enjoyed his personal acquaintance — but he had been
scarcely long enough in Havana to know where the
streets and sewers were located, when he was sent
away for the alleged purpose of investigating the mili-
tary systems of Europe. General ]\Ierritt had been but
a few weeks in command at Manila when he also got
an order to come to Paris for the alleged purpose of
giving testimony on matters about which he was ob-
viously ignorant. And so on !

At this moment we are repeating in Cuba and the
Philippines the same political faults which have made
Spanish administration a by-word throughout the
world. Our first task should be, therefore, to reor-
ganize our own administration on a business basis, so
[ 312 ]

WEST INDIES TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

that in the course of time we may attract to our colo-
nial service not the political riff-raff, the professional
failures, the social tramps, but draw to the government
service the flower of our well-educated young men,
who should look forward to political life of this nature
with as much confidence and enthusiasm as the young
West Pointer looks forward to a commission at the
end of his four years at the National Academy.

The United States needs a colonial West Point— a
school in which young men shall be prepared for ad-
ministrative positions in far-away countries — a school
in which promotion shall follow upon good work and
not political influence alone. With such a school, and
an honest desire for the welfare of the colonies under
our care, we may hope for a bright future in the West
Indies.

[ 313 ]

XXXI

AUSTRALASIA

"The destiny of modern democracies is foreshadowed in the his-
tory of democracy amongst the ancients. It is the struggle of the
rich and poor which destroyed them as it will destroy us, unless we
take warning! " — Laveleye on "Primitive Property," Vol. V.

Indifference of the Mother Country to this Colony — Startling
Advances in Material Wealth and Political Experiment

A GEOGRAPHICAL globe and half a dozen
statistical figures tell us a tale of Anglo-Saxon
expansion which is marvellous to-day, and still
more wonderful for its possibilities. Australia is not
only the largest island of the world, but a continent
containing as many square miles as the United States
(3,000,000), and a larger population of English-speak-
ing white people than was contained in the United
States of America when they separated from the mother
country in 1783. On the North American continent
are French in Canada and Louisiana, and Spanish-
speaking Mexicans across the Rio Grande. Through-
out Australia, including Tasmania and New Zealand,
we have to-day a completely homogeneous population
of Anglo-Saxons governing themselves successfully,
and, moreover, showing not merely the capacity to look
after their own affairs, but in case of need to despatch
troops in defence of the mother country, as in the late
[ 314 ]

AUSTRALASIA

South African War. As we in America celebrate July
4, 1776, so in Australia July 9, 1900, is the date held
to be of supreme national interest, as the one on which
was finally consummated the federation of the differ-
ent colonies, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland,
South Australia, Western Australia, and the Island of
Tasmania. New Zealand, for our purposes, may be
loosely regarded as part of Australia — the same lan-
guage, race, and customs — but being 1,200 miles away
from the main island, it has not been yet found con-
venient to regard it as part of the Australian Federa-
tion. In this respect it recalls somewhat the early
relations of Barbados to Virginia. Both -colonies rep-
resented local self-government and common Anglo-
Saxon aspirations, but the distance between them
made co-operation practically impossible in 1776.
When I first sighted the Australian coast (1876), that
portion of the globe was regarded as something quite
outside of the great current of human interest. The
islands of the neighborhood were treated as a species
of No Man's land, merchantmen went armed when
cruising in the neighborhood, and the interior of the
great continent was depicted as a wilderness — to be
compared with the so-called Great American Desert,
which the American school-boy of that time has since
learned to conquer and cultivate.

Australia to-day has but 3,500,000 people — to
3,000,000 s(|uare miles. When she shall be pc)i)ula(c(l
to the present density of the mother country, her popu-
lation will be 1,500,000,000 — figures that convey lit-
tle, merely because they arc so enormous. North
America is still a land of the future, for what arc scv-
I VS 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

enty-five or eighty millions to an area like that of North
America? But recent events in the Pacific call our
attention to the fact that west of the American conti-
nent is a world whose future is no less interesting, for
it is to-day, with South Africa, one of the great links
binding together the English - speaking empire
throughout the world.

Nor is it merely the 7,000 miles of Australian coast-
line which makes that island important. Far more
interesting from the colonial point of view is the po-
litical influence which such a mass of energetic white
colonists is bound to exert upon the countless islands
of Polynesia, that great South Sea wilderness reach-
ing from New Sidney to San Francisco!

A striking illustration of Australia's new position
in the eastern world is the fact that her people vig-
orously interfered when there was a prospect of Ger-
many's controlling the neighboring island of New
Guinea, or of France's founding a penal colony at her
gates. England took Httle interest in the matter, for
she attached slight commercial importance then to
that huge island. But Australia looked at the matter
with sentimental, if not commercial, eyes, and finally,
upon promising to pay £15,000 annually for ten years,
succeeded (November, 1884) in coaxing a reluctant
mother country to hoist the British flag upon that
portion of New Guinea which had not yet been taken
by Holland and Germany. That was at a time when
Bismarck was inaugurating his colonial policy by run-
ning up the German flag wherever a vacancy could
be found. New Guinea bears about the same relation
to Australia that Cuba does to the United States, and
[ 316 ]

AUSTRALASIA

Australians have already formulated something- of a
silent " Monroe doctrine," whose purport is that in
any future scheme of colonization in her neighborhood
Europe will have to deal directly, not with Westmin-
ster, but with the Government of Federated Colonies,
whose capital is to be in New South Wales.

Australasia is another instance of a colony growing
strong through the wholesome neglect of the mother
country. Even after Captain Cook's landing, in 1770,
England would not take the trouble of hoisting her
fiag there. She finally did so in consequence of the
American War of Independence, for she needed a
place to which she might deport those of her people
who had made themselves obnoxious to the law at
home. Prior to 1776 such as these were sent to the
Southern States of the United States, where they were
welcomed as farm apprentices or indentured servants.
At that time men were sent to jail for being in debt
and for many crimes which to-day would be passed
over very lightly. Hundreds of white men therefore
left their native land in convict-ships, who subse-
quently proved valuable colonists in a new world.

But aside from sending out convicts (from 1788
down to the middle of the nineteenth century), Eng-
land took little interest in this far-away possession;
and wlicn finally the discovery of gold brought a
rush of free and enterprising settlers from all parts of
the world, and when the white population commenced
to clamor for local self-government, the mother coun-
try made no objections — being rather pleased than
<jlherwisc with a good excuse for being rid of heavy
responsibility.

I 3'7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

Australia is a very recent thing compared with
America. New South Wales and Victoria established
responsible government in 1850, New Zealand in
1852, Tasmania in 1858, South Australia in 1856,
Queensland in 1857, and Western Australia not until
1890.

The Australian has more in common with the Amer-
ican than with the Englishman; I might go a step fur-
ther and say that all colonials of British ancestry re-
semble one another more than they do the people of the
mother country. I venture to think that in a gath-
ering of Canadians, Africanders, Australians, Ameri-
cans, and Englishmen, the man from the home coun-
try would be the least understood. Australians have
developed a manner at once blunt and business-like —
a manner springing from daily contact with real
things, and not conventional symbols. An Australian
can often be taken for a Yankee — never for a Lon-
doner.

The present constitution of Federated Australia is
more American than English, though it is the work
of practical men seeking for a good working machine
and not given to declamatory assertions regarding the
abstract rights of man.

Under this new constitution the individual States
reserve to themselves all rights not specifically sur-
rendered; in this respect following the example of the
United States. In Canada this rule is reversed. The
Australian Federal Government assumes all that the
United States Central Government does, and much
more — for instance, marriage, and the settlement of
industrial disputes. Railways throughout Australia
[ 318 ]

AUSTRALASIA

are mainly the property of the different States, and it
is anticipated that the Federal Government will in
time control interstate lines requiring more capital
than a single State could afford.* The State is to run
not only the postal, but the telephone and telegraph
systems; and to a large extent do the work now mo-
nopolized by express companies in America. So far,
the State ownership of railways has, neither in Aus-
tralia nor South Africa, been followed by the harm
that we of America anticipated. On the contrary, the
public have benefited to a highly satisfactory degree.
It is worth noting that the experiment of nationaliz-
ing railways, which at one time seemed to be a peculi-
arity of military monarchies like Germany and Russia,
has found its most enthusiastic defenders in ultra-
democratic communities like New Zealand and Aus-
tralia.

Federated Australia has followed the lead of the
United States in providing not only a House of Rep-
resentatives elected on a basis of proportional popula-
tion, but a Senate to which each State sends an equal
number of members, irrespective of its size or popula-
tion. But each Australian State sends six senators,
whereas in America only two are allowed to each
State. This was done in order to protect the smaller
States from possible domination by those of larger
population, for while Western Australia has 970,000.
Tasmania has only 26,000. So far as the right to

* The first railway in Argentine was opcncil in iS(;7. At tlic end of
lX()X there was a iillic over 10,000 miles <jf truck in operation.

Brazil has nearly 10,000 miles of railway.

Japan in Kfoo had 3,^.^5 miles of railway. Australia operates mure
miles of railway to-day than any Stale of South America.

I .^>') I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

vote is concerned, Australia has practical manhood
suffrage — only criminals and lunatics are excluded,
and the Upper House, or Senate, is elected about the
same as the Lower House, so that there is in the Aus-
traHan constitution no such restraining influence as
the House of Lords in England or even the indirectly
restraining influence that exists in America, where the
Senate is elected by the legislatures of the different
States.

Members of both Houses are paid alike, £400 a year,
and are also entitled to free passage over the State
railways. This is a better arrangement than with us,
where the railways grant passes as a favor to those
who are called upon to make laws. Such a favor comes
perilously near to being a bribe. I have known Ameri-
can members of legislative bodies who uniformly
purchased their own railway tickets, but not many.
The functions of Upper and Lower House in United
Australia are so nearly identical that an American
is incHned to wonder why one was not regarded as
sufficient. Time may permit the Australian Upper
House to arrogate to itself powers not at present
specified; to-day the Australian Senate appears to
have been created simply in order to give each of the
five colonies the appearance of equality. As, however,
the five States together return only thirty Senators,
we may safely anticipate a superior degree of dignity
in the deliberations of that body. In case of dead-
lock there can be a joint meeting of both Houses, when
an absolute majority must prevail.

The American Supreme Court has been reproduced
in Austraha for cases affecting the interpretation of
[ 320 ]

AUSTRALASIA

the Constitution, and for quarrels between States.
This Supreme Court can permit cases to be referred
to the London Privy Council, but the colonies have
jealously provided that it shall be practically within
their own right to carry a case to London or dispose
of it at home.

King Edward VIL figures as the nominal head of the
United States of Australia, and his Governor nomi-
nally directs affairs, but practically the colony is as in-
dependent of home-country interference as Canada —
or Cape Colony. The Boer War did much to create
that warm feeling between Australia and the mother
country which culminated in federation; and the ex-
ample set by Australia will no doubt do much to en-
courage South Africa in her turn to attempt federa-
tion as a cure for her present state of strained
relations between her several States. If federation
achieved nothing more than Free Trade between the
States, that alone would be worth heavy sacrifices.

The Federation of Australia was long in coming —
fortunately it was not accompanied by bloodshed —
though much bitterness had to be overcome before
all could unite on a few vital points. Of course the
question of custom houses roused much ill-feeling.
for all those who believed in free commercial inter-
course with the outside world felt that they would
sufifer severely when a tariff-wall should have been
reared around them, forcing them to pay highly for
domestic articles after having been accustomed to the
cheap and exccllenl things hillierto imported free of
duty. Our Louisiana and Virginia Stales felt thus
when the manufacturing interests of Massaciuisctts
I 321 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

and Pennsylvania placed import duties on articles
needed by planters — this matter alone did much to pre-
pare southern public opinion for secession in i860.

Australian Federation took its rise in the first jubi-
lee of Queen Victoria (1887). Englishmen who trav-
elled commenced to popularize the notion that the
various colonies of Englishmen scattered throughout
the world were more than mere isolated subjects, that
they formed the basis of an empire of which the Eng-
lish Sovereign should be the titular head.

George Parkin, now Principal of the ETpper College
in Toronto, was one of the pioneers in this great move-
ment — a movement that was strengthened by the
largely increasing stream of colonial families that
returned to England for a holiday and the education
of their children. In 1889 General Sir Edward Bevan
Edwards visited Australia with a view, to reporting to
the British Government on the question of Colonial
Defence, and naturally he advocated an Australian
Union of States. Sir Harry Parkes, an eminent dip-
lomat and clear-headed patriot, whose services in
China entitle him to grateful recognition by Ameri-
cans, took advantage of this visit to call a council of
Australasian Prime IMinisters, who met in 1890, cor-
dially endorsed the notion of federation, and called
upon all the States to send delegates in the year follow-
ing to a congress that should discuss this subject.

All the States sent delegates, including New Zea-
land. Sir Henry Parkes presided, and after many
weeks' deliberation, a bill w^as drafted which has
formed the basis of all subsequent legislation on this
subject.

[ 322 ]

AUSTRALASIA

This congress (1891) did excellent work, but it
failed to excite great popular enthusiasm, because its
members were not the result of direct popular elec-
tion — and public sentiment was not yet sufficiently
educated on the subject.

The matter was once more taken up in earnest in
1895. A meeting of Premiers was held in Tasmania,
and here it was determined to hold a convention of
delegates elected by direct popular vote. This con-
vention met in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's
second jubilee. The central feature of this great
jubilee was a festive procession in London, which
included representatives from every British colony,
and gave the world an object-lesson of Anglo-Saxon
unity and power.

Finally, by the close of 1899, in the midst of the
South African War, the last difficulties were overcome,
and on July 9, 1900, United Australia took her place
not merely as one of the great colonies of England, but
as the mightiest centre of Anglo-Saxon energy in the
Far East. No other nation has such a base for future
operations in the South Pacific as Australia. French,
Dutch, and Germans may have coaling stations and
Crown colonies in those latitudes — the Anglo-Saxon
has here a nursery of his own llesli and blood which is
growing stronger every day, and as it grows, relieves
the mother country of iniuli expense connected with
maintaining connnerce bey(jnd Suez.

In the event of a future i'.nropc'an war in uliirh
England nii^Iil rc'inire tlic wliok- of iier lU'cl ;il lionio,
it will be found that Australia will prove luMself (.-iinal
not only to protecting her own shores, bnt also to

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

equipping a navy that will protect Hong-Kong, Singa-
pore, and other exposed stations. At any rate, little
England of the Northern Hemisphere may draw com-
fort from the thought that, so far as the Southern
Pacific is concerned, her big children are quite ready
to accept the responsibility of maintaining themselves
in that part of the world, without calling upon the
mother country for more than benevolent neutrality.
New Zealand is a small thing compared with Aus-
tralia, yet it is as large as all England and Scotland
and Wales, with half of Ireland thrown in. It stretches
over a thousand miles from north to south, and while
it is 1,200 miles from the continent of AustraHa, it
is nearly 5,000 miles from the nearest port in South
America, with nothing between but the lonesome
Pacific. This favored island has a magnificent tem-
perate climate; and pretty much everything required
by the white man is here grown in abundance It was
only in the reign of Queen Victoria that New Zealand
was reluctantly incorporated by the British Empire
— indeed it is a curious commentary on human falli-
bility that, while fieet upon fleet has been destroyed
in struggles over wretched little islets in the waters
of the Caribbean Sea, the vast territories in the South-
em Hemisphere, notably Australasia and South Africa,
should have been, throughout the earlier years of the
19th centur}% treated as not worth annexing. There is
very good reason to think that the extraordinary alac-
rity with which England accorded complete autonomy
to her children in the Southern Hemisphere arose
largely from indifference to their existence — pos-
sibly from a desire to be rid of them as cheaply as
[ 324 ]

AUSTRALASIA

possible. In 1850 few people dreamed that Ger-
mans would colonize Shantung, Russians fortify Port
Arthur, or that war-ships would be built in Cali-
fornia.

New Zealand to-day offers a picture of state social-
ism carried further than in any other democratic com-
munity. The railways are in the hands of the State, as
elsewhere in Australasia; but in addition to that the
Government has practically undertaken to control the
relations between capital and labor.

New Zealand boldly decrees eight hours as the
length of a day's work, pensions every workingman in
his old age, furnishes a seat for the shop-girl, and in
many other respects steps in between the employer
and employe in a manner suggesting fatherly, if not
socialistic, legislation. This colony is determined that
there shall be no strikes or lock-outs, and, therefore,
when disputes arise between employers and employees,
arbitration is made compulsory. Under such a sys-
tem, where all political power is created by the laboring
man, tribunals are apt to be in his interest; yet there
are many earnest writers in that colony who are not
discouraged by their experience in this matter. Those
of us who have followed the course of gigantic strikes
in the United States during the last quarter of a cen-
tury, must concede that any arrangement that could
free us from the present uncertainty on this vexed sub-
ject would contain enotigh of blessing to make us
readily i)ut nj) with nuich discomfort.

Alre.'idy in i8<jo, according to llie oflici.'il reports
of the agent for New Zealand in London, tlu- .State
was the largest receiver of rents and the largest em-
I .^^'5 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

ployer of labor in the colony. It owned nearly all
the telegraphs, railways, and telephones in the coun-
try. It controlled and supported the hospitals and
lunatic asylums, and virtually dispensed all the public
charity throughout the colony. Its officials did all
the law business connected with the transfer of land,
a branch of work which enriches many London and
New York lawyers. Australia has set a shining ex-
ample to the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world in facili-
tating land transfer by means of a very simple and
inexpensive system of land registration. New Zea-
land has also sought to limit the evils springing from
the monopoly of the soil, and therefore grants leases
for terms of nine hundred and ninety-nine years, tak-
ing in return an amount of interest (four per cent.)
which, while it does not wholly absorb the unearned
increment, yet makes it unlikely that any person
would hold land without making use of it.

This colony also takes charge of estates, as trustees
— and may be named as executor. In other words, the
State regards itself as the head of a family. We that
have been reared in the hard school of Cobden and
Adam Smith, stand by complacently while the weak
go to the wall and the masters of finance grasp the
reins of power. New Zealand declares that such a
state of society is undesirable, and that for their part
they mean to experiment in hopes of finding some-
thing better. We are pretty well agreed that Henry
George made a masterly analysis of modern society
in his " Progress and Poverty " — but it is not yet un-
derstood to what extent his remedy can be applied with
success. At any rate, the experiment of New Zea-

[ Z2e ]

AUSTRALASIA

land deserves close attention — whatever may be its
result.

Of course education in New Zealand, as throughout
Australasia, is free and compulsory.

Large estates are discouraged by a graduated in-
come tax, which rests lightly upon the man of small
means, but takes a great deal out of the rich ones.
The influence of Henry George is seen in a law of New
Zealand which exempts improvements and buildings
on a farm, and taxes solely the land itself. Small
farmers are altogether exempt. Land worth £5,000
is taxed one penny in the pound on the capital value.
The tax rises with the value, culminating at three pence
in the pound on land of £210,000, or more, value.
Everyone votes in New Zealand, women as well as
men.

We must not think of our New Zealand State So-
cialists as we do of those in France and Germany, who
deal almost exclusively with theories so blended with
truth that the practical politician has difficulty in using
them. The New Zealander is a practical Englishman,
who deliberately undertakes experiments on new soil
and under favorable conditions which it would be al-
most revolutionary to attempt in England or any other
old country where men arc bound down by social
prejudice and tradition. Even in America, men wlio
advocate such reforms as New Zealand is now enjo} ing
are pronounced to be cranks.

It is interesting to note that, with insignificant cx-
cci)tions, all the conununities of white men south of
the Ju|uator are eiliier republics in name or enjoy
practical sclf-goveriMueiil. ( )f these coninuinitics

I .^-7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

South America furnishes the earliest settlements, and
also a priority as regards the time when most of them
cast ofif the yoke of Spain and declared themselves
independent. Brazil was the last to become a repubhc
in name, though in fact she has throughout this cen-
tury enjoyed a fairly liberal constitutional rule. Brit-
ish Guiana has enjoyed much local liberty, though in
dealing with so vast a territory as South America we
can afford to ignore the three Guianas entirely, even
were they in the Southern Hemisphere.

The two South African Republics were created at
about the same time that the various States of Aus-
tralia were granted Responsible Government, and the
English colonies of the Cape and Natal have enjoyed
virtual Home Rule even when ostensibly they figured
as mere Crown colonies. South Africa, Australia, and
South America are now dominated by the white man.
In each of these continents the natives are being ex-
terminated. In Australia there are about 50,000 left,
in Africa even the negro cannot hold his own against
the imported laborer from Bombay; and as for South
America, if we limit ourselves to Chili, Peru, and the
adjacent territory, we may safely regard the day of
the native as having passed, and the day of the white
man, or at least the Chinaman, as having arrived.
South America, however, is handicapped in having
behind her centuries of clerical misrule, and a popula-
tion largely made up of negro elements. The white
man of South Africa and Australia has been wiser in
this respect, and has not sought to multiply at the ex-
pense of his racial purity. Australia is the youngest
of these great communities of the Southern Hemi-
[ 328 ]

AUSTRALASIA

sphere, she is the most homogeneous, the most en-
lightened, the least hampered by tradition, the most
ready to adopt new ideas and experiment with new
theories. It is not surprising, therefore, that she
should in the past fifty years have pushed ahead more
rapidly than South Africa, to say nothing of the Argen-
tine and Chili. She furnishes us one of the few
examples in history of a great agglomeration of States
uniting into one organic whole through the mere force
of common-sense unaided by fear of a common enemy.
We may live to see the United States of South America,
as well as the United States of South Africa — when
that time comes, Australia may have occasion to fear
for her" supremacy in the Southern Hemisphere — but
not before.

[ 329 ]

XXXII

CAN THE WHITE MAN AND HIS WIFE
FLOURISH IN THE TROPICS

"We belong to that race whose obvious task it is . . . to
spread civil liberty . . . in every part of the earth, on conti-
nent and isle. " Francis Lieber," Civil Liberty and Self-gov-
ernment," p. 21.

Railways and Sanitation Essentials to the White Man's Happiness
in the Tropics — Heat Itself not Dangerous

UP to within this generation, which we may
roughly designate as the period of universal
steam communication, white man's efforts in
the tropics have been largely measured by English
experience in the East Indies and Africa under cir-
cumstances not calculated to give this question a fair
test. Up to 1855, British India was a practical mo-
nopoly in the hands of a vast chartered trading com-
pany, which built forts, maintained troops on land and
sea, and sent out agents, with no other object than pro-
ducing dividends for shareholders in London. Before
the general use of steam in those regions, when a jour-
ney home around the Cape meant the best part of a
year at sea, a colonial official was forced to remain at
his post, however unhealthy it might be; for it was
not possible, as it is to-day, to run off by rail for
change of air in the hills, or by the sea-side.
[ 330 ]

THE WHITE MAN IN THE TROPICS

So it was with the Philippines. The white mer-
chants there did not dare take their wives out with
them, because of the monotonous conditions enforced
by isolation. In the early part of this century invalids
from the East Indies had the Cape of Good Hope as
their nearest recruiting station, which, though less
than half the distance to Europe, was yet a long and
costly journey at best. To-day the merchant of Singa-
pore or Manila can take an annual holiday with his
wife and children to many bracing resorts, compara-
tively near at hand; as, for instance, the hill country
about Nagasaki, the shores of the Gulf of Pitchili, or,
due south to New Zealand. Even the journey to
Europe is only thirty days, as against a hundred and
thirty at least, fifty years ago, in the days of sailing
ships.

The great Dark Continent was, in my childhood, a
land of horror, into which a few daring, if not reck-
less, enthusiasts had penetrated, only to emerge with
tales of pestilence and human savagery far from en-
couraging to would-be colonists. Here and there
along the coast were trading stations, to which men
ventured at a very high salary, with a clear under-
standing that the chances were rather opposed to
their coming home alive.

It is also notable that while the closing years of the
eighteenth century were almost exclusively occupied
in savage struggles for the possession of colonics, the
close of the Napoleonic wars left luiropc, and notably
England, strangely apathetic on the subject. In the
great " Seven Years' War," which closed in 17^^^. h.ilf
the world had ijceii ablaze; war was wagcil in Canada,
[ 331 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the West Indies, India, and the Malay Islands; every
sea was alive with the war-ships of European powers,
staking their last drop of blood in the violent acquisi-
tion of mainly tropical territory. Barely two genera-
tions later, and we find England declining to accept
New Zealand when offered to her by English settlers;
treating Australia as a financial burden, useful only as
a dumping-ground for criminals; discussing in Parlia-
ment whether India be worth defending; questioning
the value of Hong-Kong, and even refusing to be re-
sponsible for territories in South Africa which in 1900
were deemed worth fighting for with 200,000 British
troops.

This strange apathy regarding colonies which ruled
from the close of the Napoleonic wars down to the
time when the German Government provoked the par-
tition of Africa in 1890, was based in the first instance
upon the general depreciation in value of tropical land,
consequent upon anti-slavery agitation. This senti-
ment was fortified by Englishmen like Cobden and
Bright, who opposed Imperialistic measures. But,
above all, at least so far as the tropics were concerned,
the home country felt it to be a waste of money to
bother about countries that promised returns only to a
few traders and missionaries. To-day, however, men
yet in the prime of hfe can mark a revolution on this
subject, and we need not be more than fairly sanguine
to anticipate a still greater one in the lives of our chil-
dren. We have seen equatorial countries once con-
demned as uninhabitable grow to contain a busy and
vigorous white population. Let us give credit to the
brave Boers who first demonstrated that the white
[ ZZ2 I

THE WHITE MAN IN THE TROPICS

man could bring up large families and found healthy
communities in the interior of South Africa. Natal,
on the coast, is a tropical country, yet, thanks to an
excellent sanitary administration, its white population
is flourishing. The citizen of Durban can in a few
hours take his wife and family to an elevation of four
or five thousand feet, where the nights are dry and cold
as in the Adirondacks. This was impossible ten years
ago, and in the days when you and I went to school
this colony was looked upon as unfit for white habita-
tion. So far as I know, Natal is the only tropical col-
ony in Africa where white people live in comfort with
wife and children; but if others do not, it is not be-
cause God has been unkind to them, but that they have
not shown the same energy in draining the land and
building railways to the high lands of the interior.

In British Guiana, where Demerara suggests a trop-
ical Holland — a colony showing its Dutch ancestry by
the excellence of its canals and the tidiness of its
streets — the white man is within seven degrees of the
equator, between the Amazon and the Orinoco, yet
such eminent authorities as Darnell Davis have given
me assurance that generations of white people have
flourished there, thanks to the local sanitary condition
fortified by the constant breezes of the Atlantic Ocean.
On the occasion of my visit to that colony I found no
inconvenience from moving about at night in a man-
ner that woulfl have stretched mc out with a fovor
in French Gmrma, which is i)ractically the same i:!;cct-
gnipliical bit of coiuitry. l)ritish Guiana is the Natal
of South Auicrira, a clean, healthy, woll-govcrncd
oasis in a wilderness of allege<l republics. She enjoys
[ 33.S I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

the advantage of rapid and frequent intercourse with
Barbados and the rest of the world, but it would be
of enormous service if a railway were constructed
through Demerara to the mountains at the head waters
of the Esequibo; for then her people would have the
means of rapidly reaching a bracing mountain air at
comparatively slight cost of time and money. Hong-
Kong and Manila are practically in the same latitude,
so far as the thermometer is concerned, and, therefore,
what the white man could do in the one he should be
able to do in the other as well. The British Govern-
ment occupied Hong-Kong in 1841, less than sixty
years ago, and of course it is too soon to generalize.
But so far as the testimony of old merchants is con-
cerned, it is an island where white children are born
and reared, and w^hile the climate is not to-day as fa-
vorable to them as that of the mother country, still
each day brings about an improvement in the means
of making life there better worth living. In the early
years of that colony the English Government seriously
discussed its total abandonment on the ground of its
unhealthiness. Since then drainage and an excellent
water supply have made the place satisfactory for short
residence, while a railway, which runs to the top of the
mountain at the centre of the island, now enables the
white merchant to keep his wife and children in a brac-
ing atmosphere, to which he resorts every night after
business hours.

At Manila, the white man finds life agreeable enough,

provided his house be on the shore where he gets the

benefit of the breezes from, the bay. But we need more

than this; and the Government should immediately

[ 334 ]

THE WHITE MAN IN THE TROPICS

construct and operate, for military as well as other pur-
poses, a railway with frequent and rapid train service
to the mountains in the neighborhood. Our fleet and
army need a health resort in the tropics, and the money
spent in this way would be saved a hundred-fold by
the increased efficiency of our forces in Chinese waters.
The white merchant needs a comfortable home for his
wife and children, and no step taken by our Govern-
ment would tend more to the civilization of the coun-
try, than properly organized white homes. The white
man in the Philippines has so far given the natives a
sad picture of immorality — of concubinage with na-
tive women — of gambling and drunkenness. This state
of things we are apt to attribute to the climate, when,
in fact, it proceeds from our own indifference to sani-
tary laws. During my stay in Manila, at the time of
the war with Spain, I found the hospitals where Ameri-
can troops were cared for — to say nothing of the bar-
racks — so foul, from a sanitary point of view, that an
epidemic should reasonably have been anticipated. I
tried to paddle my canoe through the canals opening
from the Pasig River, and at points where the stench
arrested my further progress mothers were bathing
their children and American volunteers were absorbing
foul germs. Is it a wonder that mortality is high at
such places? Is it not a miracle that any of our troops
should return alive?

We hear much of the tropical comnumitics where
quarantine takes the place of sanitation, but the news-
papers have no time to tell of the many (|uiet and pros-
perous cf)mmiuiitii'S thai cieaii their streets and Hush
their drains, and tlicrcforc live in the tropics as wrlj
I .US I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

as in Boston or Liverpool. Manila, under Spanish
rule, was a filthy, unhealthy place, and it will remain
so under American rule unless our administration
profits by experience.

In the West Indies, Havana has been in a chronic
state of contaminating filthiness ever since it had
enough people there to poison the soil, the water, and
the air. The harbor has no tide worth mentioning,
and the filth that flows into it remains at the doors
of the city. Cuba needs a strong sanitary government
in Havana, as do the Philippines. In both cases rail-
way construction in all directions should be regarded
as the most effective means of developing the interior
and asserting the beneficent supremacy of our Gov-
ernment. We should be able to do with ease in Cuba
and Porto Rico what other white men have done in
other parts of the West Indies, notably at Jamaica, St.
Kitts, Antigua, and Barbados, where white English-
men live and have lived for many generations.

Nor let us omit to notice one factor that has injured
the West Indies no less than English possessions in
other tropical countries. It has been the policy of
the Crown to fill colonial offices very largely by men
born in the home country. This has its advantages
for certain high posts where it is necessary that an
executive officer be raised well above local party dif-
ferences. But it is the part of political wisdom to
encourage as far as possible the colonists themselves
to take an interest in their own government, by open-
ing to them careers in their own colony, rather than
by forcing them to look elsewhere for recognition.
While England has for many years been sending to
[ 336^]

THE WHITE MAN IN THE TROPICS

the West Indies officials from the home country, those
islands have been at the same time furnishing to the
United States a number of Creole emigrants that have
risen to eminence, and would have been most useful
colonial ofEcials had the opportunity offered itself to
them.

Officials who come to the West Indies from Eu-
rope, remain as a rule but for a limited number of years,
cannot identify themselves closely with the colony, do
not as a rule bring a family with them, and frequently
carry away their salary to spend it at home. Were it
the rule to reserve such posts for men born in the colo-
nies, or at least educated there and identified with
Creole needs, England would be better instructed in
regard to many of her children and we should have
fuller evidence regarding the capacity of our race to
make the tropics their home.

It is of great importance to us to note that in nearly
all the West Indian islands are lofty mountains emi-
nently suitable for health resorts. In most of these
islands white people could live as comfortably as in
Virginia or Kentucky, if the Government did but open
the high land of the interior to settlement, as has been
done in South Africa, thanks to the Boers and the
government railways.

Of course all extremes of heal, as well as of cold, arc,
in general, prejudicial to happy life, and far be it from
me to advocate white man's migration to i)laces un-
suited to his daily comfort. lUil, as I have i)ointcd
out, many j)l;i(cs that wore once universally regarded
as uninlialjitablc, or, at least, dangerous to IkmIiIi. have
proved to be suitable .'iftcr a few years of connnon-
I .U7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

sense administration. And it is equally clear that
many places which to-day have an evil name, notably
Manila and Cuba, will, under proper administration,
become satisfactory places for white men and women.
I do not say that they will prove merely equal to New
Orleans or Marseilles — that would not be saying much
— but rather that they will resemble Durban in Africa
or Georgetown in Demerara.

The present state of life in the tropics, where sani-
tary conditions are not satisfactory, is apt to produce
a community, mainly of young men, who lend them-
selves naturally to the doctrine that whiskey is a pre-
ventive of malaria. Indeed, it is noticeable that peo-
ple who yield to an appetite usually find a plausible
pretext for so doing. At any rate, nowhere in the
world have I noted so much promiscuous cocktailing
at all hours of the day as in tropical colonies where,
of all places, water should be regarded as the one safe
drink. Of course, in most cases, the man who in-
dulges remarks that he feels the need of something for
the sake of his stomach. It is not by accident that
Arabs, Chinese, Malays, and Hindoos, to say nothing
of negroes, regard water as man's natural drink. The
universal use of tea in China arises from the pollution
of the water and the consequent necessity of boiling
it first as a preventive against enteric complaints.
China and Japan are not free from dysentery, but the
marvel is, in China at least, that there is any popula-
tion at all, seeing that the wells are nearly all con-
taminated. Such as have studied the question of white
expeditions in Africa assure me that the worst water
is better than alcoholic drink — that in all cases where
[ 338 ]

THE WHITE MAN IN THE TROPICS

alcohol has been kept from the men, the advantages
have been fully acknowledged subsequently.

Now, when a tropical community is composed, as
it frequently is to-day, mainly of young bachelors with
large salaries and abundant animal spirits, it is but
natural that such a community should convince itself
that after all it is better to enjoy a short and merry
life, than take any chances of a long one. And, in
many cases, thanks to a good sweat every day on the
tennis or polo field, the young men on tropical sta-
tions have not only known how to live a merry life,
but a tolerably long one as well, though the most of
them have returned home with permanently enfeebled
constitutions.

Every white woman to-day, if she realized the in-
terests of her sex, would agitate politically for the
sanitation of the tropical world and the building of rail-
ways to the hills, for only when that is done can some-
thing be accomplished for the unhappy surplus of
womanhood which has to stay at home, while brothers,
husbands, and sweethearts are off in India, Borneo,
Sumatra, Jamaica — throughout the hot belt — earning
the money on which they hope to come home and
marry — usually at an age when they are uninteresting
to women and a bore to thcMnsclvcs. It is a maxim
in the theatrical and literary world that when woman
wants a thing she finds means of securing it. Now
let her realize that under certain conditions she can
follow her sweetheart in safety to the tropics — that she
can marry and have her home perched up in the hills
overlooking the Iirubor where her husband mnsf spend
the day with a pith hclnu't on his head I <l Ihi mu c
I 339 ]

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

understand clearly that every evening she can play
lawn tennis or have a scamper on horseback, and in-
dulge in the many pastimes that make life sweet, and,
take my word for it, the Government will have to do
her bidding.

[ 340 ]

XXXIII

THE WHITE INVASION OF CHINA

"// is not dense population but the causes which prevent social
organization from taking its natural development . . . that
keep millions just on the verge of starvation; and every now and
again force millions beyond it. ' ' — H enry George, *♦ Progress and
Poverty," p. 109, ed. 1881.

Treaty Ports — Self-government of White Merchants — The Open

Door Policy

CHINA'S earliest experience of a permanent
settlement by white men within her jurisdic-
tion was nearly four centuries ago (1557) when
Portugal secured a lease of Macao near Canton, and,
therefore, within the tropics. Their last experience
was in the North, when the German Empire acquired
a lease of territory at Kiao Chow in 1897. The Eng-
lish occupation of Wei-hai-Wei, in 1898, may be re-
garded as a direct consequence of Russia's seizure of
Port Arthur, to say nothing of Germany's action.

The Portuguese occupation of Macao was originally
regarded with unconcern, because the supremacy of
the Chinese Government, as landlord, was not ques-
tioned; and the little bit of land occupied (formerly
an island, but now a peninsula) never ropresiMited
more than a trading station to the (loveninuiil of
Pekin. ICvcii when, in iHHi, Portugal was granted
sovereign jurisdiction in lliat then decrepit port, the
I .VI' I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

concession represented no menace whatever to the
Chinese Government.

In 1 84 1, England, as a war measure, seized the bar-
ren and practically uninhabited island of Hong-Kong,
in the immediate neighborhood of Canton and almost
in sight of Macao. In this instance no Chinaman had
occasion to feel that the soil of his country had been
profaned, for the bulk of the islands which stud this sec-
tion of the China seas had been a species of freebooters'
Paradise, and the presence of England was the im-
mediate signal for such a restoration of commercial
confidence that this inhospitable rock was quickly peo-
pled with such a swarm of Chinamen as seriously to em-
barrass the authorities on the subject of elbow-room.
After the war of i860, in which French and English
troops marched jointly to Pekin over the road once
more occupied in 1900 by a white military combina-
tion, England added to Hong-Kong a small strip
of territory, where now ship-building yards, vast dry-
docks, storehouses, and steamship wharves testify to
the commercial character of this annexation. But
even this proved inadequate to the commercial needs
of this marvellously successful colony, and in 1898
another strip was added to it, about equal to that which
Germany had occupied at Kiao Chow the year before.

Whatever the mandarins may have felt — for, of
course, their corrupt system demands the total exclu-
sion of foreigners — there is no doubt that the people
in general, from the great bankers of Canton to the
poorest boatmen in Hong-Kong, welcomed the
change as a promise of better things.

Mr. Stewart Lockhart, an eminent sinologist, who
[ 342 ]

THE WHITE INVASION OF CHINA

was entrusted with the task of marking out this fron-
tier, told me that during his delicate and dangerous
mission he was, by all but the mandarin class, greeted
with cordial inquiries as to how soon they might come
under the British flag. We may take it almost as a
proved proposition that, when a British subject is mo-
lested in China or the British flag insulted, the cause
is to be found either in the instigation of native offi-
cials or gross tactlessness on the part of the victim.

On the occasion of my first trip to China (1876) the
treaty ports were much alarmed by the recent strange
murder of Margary, whose knowledge of Chinese and
tact in handling the natives fitted him eminently for
the task of crossing China to the frontiers of India.
At the time of his murder the Chinese Government
loudly disclaimed any share in it — on the contrary,
pretended that he was the victim of mob fanaticism.
But this brave man's subsequently published letters,
coupled with the legal investigation that followed,
prove satisfactorily that throughout his journey to In-
dia he had no occasion to take precautions regarding
his safety, and that he was murdered on the return
journey by official instigation.

White man's colonization in China is of two kinds
— the one represented by France, Russia, and Ger-
many, the other by Great Britain, the United States,
and Ii.ilf a dozen other European nations which iiuli
vidually represent no great colonial ambition, but who
silciilly sni)p<)rt the policy of the Anglo-Saxt)n. I
refer particularly to Norway, Sweden, Denmark. I l«il
land, Svvil/crland, and the German flenienl that is out-
side of oflicial and inilil.irv inlhience. I'rance, in

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

South China, introduces her own administrative sys-
tem — just as she does in Algiers. The Russians at
Vladivostock and Port Arthur shut out ahen enter-
prise still more effectively. The Germans at Kiao
Chow proclaim the open door in theory, but in prac-
tice they have secured a door whose hinges are very
rusty save to Germans in uniform. The Anglo-Saxon
forces, on the other hand, have colonized China from
Hong-Kong to Tientsin, at so-called treaty ports,
where the Chinese Government has at various times
during the past sixty years conceded land and water-
front privileges for commercial purposes. These con-
cessions were first acquired and exploited by English
and American merchants, although under treaties
that permitted the rest of the world to share on
equal terms. All the world has profited by the expedi-
tion of Commodore Perry to Japan, in 1853, and also
by the successive steps which England has subse-
quently taken in order to establish security for Euro-
pean merchants throughout the Far East.

Japan has abundantly proved that she is one of the
great civilized powers of the world, and therefore
white man's exceptional position there has been wisely
abolished. But in China the Government still persists
on so low a level of moral official activity that we have
no guaranty for the maintenance of treaty rights ex-
cepting the perpetual presence of gun-boats.

It is due to the habits of self-government, instinc-
tive in English and Americans, that such ports as Tien-
tsin, Cheefoo, Shanghai, etc., present to-day pictures
of excellent municipal government contrasting vividly
with the filthy Chinese communities round about.
[ 344 ]

THE WHITE INVASION OF CHINA

The so-called " treaty ports " of my acquaintance
need not fear comparison with settlements of equal
size anywhere. These " foreign concessions," though
nominally conducted by Consuls of the Powers and
perpetually visited by war-ships, are, nevertheless, in
practice, thrown back upon their own energies for
the municipal government they enjoy, and, above
all, for protection against sudden outbursts of native
violence.

Shanghai, for instance, produces the impression of a
model seaport town, whose citizens secure vastly more
in return for the taxes they pay than do the voters of
New York or Chicago. This beautiful metropolis of
the Yangtse-Kiang Valley has its whole water front
laid out as a pleasure garden, producing the happy
result that we might enjoy in New York, did our
Riverside Park extend completely round the island.
In warm evenings the families congregate here and
listen to beautiful music discoursed by Filipino per-
formers, who in this part of the world are, musically, as
eminent as are the Mexicans in the North American
continent. There is a splendid " country club " for
recreation, where a race-track is laid out, and where
polo, tennis, cricket, and other sports furnish recrea-
tion to both sexes.

On the \V(j()Sung is an excellently aiipointcd row-
ing and yacht club, and races arc constantly being lu-id,
to which a(Iditi(jnal zest is imparted by international
rivalry, 'ihe streets of Shanghai are. even in the
slums, kept as clean as (hose of an I'-uidpcan park, and
the roads arc patrolled by nioiuitcd incn, whose vast
turbans, Hashing eyes, and mighty iniistachios pro-
l 345 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

claim them warriors from the hills of India — the re-
doubtable Sikhs. The Chinaman has a peculiar re-
spect for these warriors, for they combine the stoicism
of the English " Bobby " with an Oriental cunning
superior to any other imported article of that charac-
ter. There are also Chinese policemen, and, above
them all, white inspectors.

Shanghai, besides, is thoroughly well organized in
the matter of a local volunteer military force, fire de-
partment, benevolent societies, and the many unob-
trusive institutions which reflect the self-governing
citizen. It is an anomalous colony, this treaty port
of Shanghai, for it is a government part Chinese and
partly at the mercy of a committee consisting of the
consuls of different nations. All the elements of dis-
cord and ofificial chaos are present, every nation has
its own post-office, and the utmost confusion might
be anticipated under a system of this kind. The con-
suls are not only postmasters, but they also fill the posi-
tion of judges over their own people, and in cases where
Chinese are involved they sit on the same bench with a
Chinese colleague.

To-day the system is manifestly absurd and should
be abolished in the interests of the colonists them-
selves. Shanghai, for instance, should be endowed
with enough territory to expand according to the
growing needs of the white population — say a radius
of forty or fifty miles inland. This would enable her
citizens to control the sanitary drainage, the building
of roads, and the safety of the port, with some degree
of efficiency, and at the same time give them the means
of dredging the bar at the mouth of the Woosung,
[ 346 ]

THE WHITE INVASION OF CHINA

which at present threatens to exclude ocean-going
steamers.

This great port has been built up by the enterprise
of white colonists, who have come to this part of the
world with their families for the purpose of bettering
themselves — just as others have gone to Calcutta or
Durban or Demerara. The merchants of Shanghai
sorely need more territory over which to exercise po-
lice control, and a removal of the many restrictions
which now arise from having a committee of conflict-
ing consuls to manage their affairs.

The Shanghai republic is ripe for local independence
under a general European guaranty. It should, in the
interests of trade, be raised to the position of a free
port — a Venice of the Far East — a Hamburg, as it was
before the Bismarckian era.

All classes of the community sufifer under the pres-
ent system — none, perhaps, more than the Americans,
owing to the present and past manner of recruiting
our consular force. When I visited China in 1876,
the American Consul-General was a man who was re-
garded as a thief by the merchant community, and,
shortly afterward, was sent to the penitentiary for hav-
ing stolen UKjiicy from the mails.

On my second visit to Shanghai, in 1898, the chief
American Consul was one whose appointment had
elicited the |)r()lcst of every respectable merchant in
Minm;ip()Hs, his native town. The only training for
his higli i)osl had been gained as manager of a jirofos-
sional base -ball clnb; otherwise his career had boon
that of the aviiage small politician.

He had been publicly sla|)|)c'(| m the Sliaiij^liai cliil)
I .V\7 I

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

by his predecessor in office, under circumstances which
occasioned no regret in the mind of the club commit-
tee! And be it said in parenthesis that, in the Far
East, when a white man sinks so low that he cannot
hold the good opinion of his fellow white men, he is
not likely to prove a valuable public servant.

From our point of view, consuls have no business
in colonies which are officially designated " treaty
ports." If China is a civilized power, in the sense that
we exchange diplomatic agents on equal terms, then
our consuls should be sent to Chinese towns, and not
to white settlements. If, on the other hand, our con-
suls are afraid to take up residence in the midst of Chi-
nese communities, let us recognize the fact frankly,
do away with the farce of receiving Chinese diplo-
matic agents, and treat the white communities in
China as colonies in the land of the barbarian. To-day
the white man is exposed to daily insult in the settle-
ments which his energy has made prosperous. At
Cheefoo, Dr. Corbett, the oldest missionary, told me
that no white lady could traverse the town alone be-
cause of the foul language she had to hear. In that
port white energy has made clean avenues and built
solid houses — yet the settlers are confined to a very
small area and are, as it were, besieged by a vast Chi-
nese army, through whose midst one must pass be-
fore the open country can be reached.

At Canton the white community is herded on an
island little bigger than an Atlantic liner, and from one
year's end to the other the wives of white merchants
hardly know what it is to take a real walk in the coun-
try.

[ 348 ]

THE WHITE INVASION OF CHINA

Tientsin has been bnilt up, like Johannesburg,
through white enterprise, and yet that settlement on
the Peiho, like its sister at Shanghai, in the whole
course of its existence has received no aid from the
Chinese Government in the way of keeping the water
approaches navigable. In 1876 I steamed up to Tien-
tsin as well as to Shanghai. In 1898 both these ports
were unequal to furnishing the requisite water for
sea-going craft.

In the present chaotic state of Chinese politics,
where international rivalry makes the situation still
more uncertain, the duty of England and America is
clear — in so far as they are actuated solely by an in-
terest in commercial expansion. They should at once
arrange for the local independence under international
guarantee of such settlements as Shanghai, Cheefoo
and Tientsin, together with such territory in the neigh-
borhood as may be found necessary for the health of
white families.

When Germany seized Kiao Chow no white people
were settled there who might have furnished a pretext.
She dispossessed the Chinese already there and pro-
poses to create in Shantung a white community, Ger-
man in government and German in speech.

But self-government is not likely to be tolerated
by the Prussian eagle, and without self-government
it is not likely that German merchants now established
in ll()ng-Kr)ng and .Sliaiii;hai will move (o Kiao
Chow.

The intcrnalional guar.iiitcc wliiili I have propo.sed
implies no menace to the integrity of ("liiiia — ccr-
lainly no more than is now involved in the prcs-
I .VN 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

ent treaty ports. There is no probability that the
white race will ever overspread China — or ever desire
to — in our time. We entertain but a legitimate de-
sire to enjoy with her people the same trade guaran-
ties that we have with Japan. The people of the
" treaty ports " ask land for no military object, and
desire only what is absolutely necessary — for every
mile means increased cost of policing. But what they
demand to-day is justified by the fact that China is as
yet incapable of governing herself, let alone affording
a government fit for a white man. The white settle-
ments, if they are to prosper, must partake somewhat
of enclaves within the territory of the Chinese Empire,
limited to half a dozen points easily reached by gun-
boats.

In China the white man has not, and cannot for
many generations, have social intercourse with the in-
habitants — the gulf separating their domestic institu-
tions is too vast to be bridged over in our time. In
all China I know of no club in which Chinese and
whites can associate on equal terms. In Japan, on
the other hand, I have found happiness in the social
atmosphere which they breathe, have felt myself sur-
rounded with ideas regarding honor, cleanliness,
woman, and morality, often superior to those we
preach and try to practise. At the principal social
club of Tokio, Japanese and Anglo-Saxons meet on
terms of perfect equality — for myself I should say that
the Anglo-Saxon in Japan feels, socially, more at home
than in several places of southern Europe where the
inhabitants are called white by courtesy.

It should not be the policy of the white nations to
[ 350 ]

THE WHITE INVASION OF CHINA

dismember China. Let us bear in mind that in 1900,
when the allied armies entered Tientsin, the Christian
nations all tolerated plundering. The Japanese Gen-
eral, Fukushima, alone set an example of soldierly self-
restraint. It is time we sent missionaries to the bar-
racks of so-called Christian soldiers.

I can recall the energy with which General Fuku-
shima, as early as 1898, discountenanced all notions
of a partition of China — insisting with a volume of
cogent reasoning that her integrity should be pre-
served, and she should be led by persistent pressure to
improve her government.

It should be manifestly absurd to work toward the
disruption of a race entity like China at a time when
history so clearly demonstrates the folly of similar
movements. This century has been eminently one of
national reorganization on the lines of racial affinity —
the unity of Italy is one instance — that of Germany is
but half-complete — Russia's experience in Poland but
marks the folly of partition on such a plan. China is
just now very foul politically, very helpless as a fighting
force, and strangely dull to all national aspiration. But
these are conditions that arc in process of change, and
we may be sure that a partition of the country between
the great military powers would result in a Chinese Po-
land against which many Russias would prove inef-
fectual.

To-day, with the help of Japan, the Anglo-Saxon
element can do in China a great work for civilization
— one that will earn us llu- gratitude of the Chinese
themselves. We can gnaiantce their integrity at the
same time that we guarantee that of otw colonies on
the Yangtse, the Pcilio, and clu-wliere. We can lake
1 ,\Si 1

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

over in trust their postal and telegraphic service, as
we have already earned their gratitude by administer-
ing their customs. We can build their railways and
high-roads, without in the least impairing their sover-
eign rights, or displaying a hostile flag. This service
will necessarily employ an enormous number of na-
tives, who will thus familiarize themselves with hon-
esty, punctuality, and justice in the conduct of great
enterprises. All those who supervise these depart-
ments of public improvement will be, as in the case of
the maritime customs, nominal officials of the Chinese
Government, and all the revenues will be credited to
the empire or spent for its benefit. In the same man-
ner the canals of China must be cleaned out and once
more made navigable, and here again the enormous
number of coolies that will find employment promises
to rally in support of the white man an immense pub-
lic sentiment.

We know how much has been done for security in
Mexico by the invasion of the American railway, with
its army of employes trained to punctuality, honesty,
and fair play. It is little exaggeration to say that the
locomotive has been worth, to our neighbor beyond
the Rio Grande, as much as a gigantic police force —
an element against which revolutionary agitation
proves futile. People don't quarrel with their bread
and butter, as a rule, and in China the white man will
find little obstacle so long as his progress is marked,
not by missionary stations and the graves of soldiers
— but by the industrial triumphs in which the Chinese
themselves have a share as wage-earners. The loco-
motive will conquer China yet — all depends upon the
coolness and courage of the driver.
[ 352 ]

XXXIV

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLONIZATION

*'The ideal to which we must look in the coming century (twen-
tieth) is the consolidating of the nations under world governments.
The suggestion that Switzerland and the United States should be
under one government is not so absurd as it looks. ^^ — New York In-
dependent, December 13, 1900, editorial.

Trade Does not Necessarily Follow the Flag — Home Government
Should Encourage Emigration

THE last four centuries have piled up for our
benefit an accumulation of experience in the
colonial field that should now be turned to
good account. Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, French,
and finally Imperial Germany, all have helped in the
solution of problems which must for some time engage
the serious attention of statesmen, England herself
has committed in times past nearly all the follies which
have destroyed other nations, but, fortunately for us.
her people have known how to repair the blunders of
government more rapidly than government could ai>-
preciatc the mischief that was being dene.

One by one, colonial doctrines based upon tlioo-
logical and political ignorance have given way to more
liberal ones, luitil to-day, at least in the Anglo-Saxon
world, colonies arc not merely permitted but urged to
exercise sclf-goveriinKiit (<» (lie greatest possible
extent.

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

The present condition of some nations, however — as
for instance France and Germany, produces an official
attitude toward colonies which we should carefully
avoid, for it leads back to those errors which under-
mined the strength of Spain.

The Bismarckian school of statesmanship is strong
in more countries than Germany. It is a dangerous
school from which to graduate colonial administra-
tors, for in it is taught the doctrine that physical force
is the dominating factor in national development.
Bismarck never moved without a sabre in one hand
— even in the peaceful halls devoted to legislation;
his idea of good government was the tidiness and
monotony of the barrack-yard.

To-day we often hear the meaningless maxim that
" trade follows the flag " — a maxim which has dazzled
continental Europe and spurred Germany on to enor-
mous pecuniary sacrifices for the purpose of planting
her flag in far-away islands. But German trade has
not followed the German flag in the past, nor does it
to-day; on the contrary, it follows that of England and
the United States, and will continue to follow them
so long as the German merchant finds ours more
profitable. German trade and German shipping were
built up to splendid proportions before Germany had
a single colony, and it is worth noting that the craze
for colonies has arisen, not from the sober merchants
of Bremen and Hamburg, but from military, official,
and high-school circles with scant practical knowl-
edge. The great steamship lines from Germany to
New York naturally rejoice in the prospect of heavy
subsidies, no matter for what object; but no govern-
[ 354 ]

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLONIZATION

ment subsidies can outweigh for a moment the solid
advantages arising from free intercourse with ports
like New York and Boston, the River Plate and Hong-
Kong. The German Government can by a heavy
subsidy produce a steamship line between Kiao Chow
and Shanghai, but the German taxpayer must make
up to the owners of that line what they lose by embark-
ing in an enterprise devoid of legitimate freight re-
turns. " Trade follows the flag " is one of those half
truths calculated to do much mischief. It suggests
the plausible idea that we buy our goods on senti-
mental and not on business principles. In real life we
do no such thing. We do not buy our groceries from
the shop nearest to us if there is one further off which
gives us better value for our money. We do not
cross the ocean in the ships of our own nationality
if there are others who do the service as well and for
less money. German ships leave New York loaded
with American passengers and they return from Aus-
tralia and Hong-Kong crowded with British. If trade
followed the flag, passenger trade would be the first
to prove it, but it does not. On the contrary, other
things being equal, English and Americans show un-
mistakably that they patronize steamship lines with
something of the impartiality with which they pur-
chase wines or groceries.

Many of the most intelligent, industrious, and enter-
prising nations of Iuiroj)c, tliat send forth a steady
annual stream of emigrants, have no Hag to follow —
in the German sense — but are daily enriching them-
selves, the land in which they settle, and also the honios
they have left. They look out upon the woild
I .i55 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

through no eyes of prejudice; they select the scene
of their activity with a single eye to their own personal
requirements, and they prosper without the assistance
of their home administration.

Norway grows daily stronger and richer; she has
no colony worth mentioning, yet sends forth annually
a strong percentage of her vigorous people to the
United States, and elsewhere. Bismarckian politicians
are capable of seeing and counting the men that leave
a country, but they are not able to appreciate the in-
direct advantages which compensate for this tem-
porary loss. The German official can understand why
his fellow-subjects should slip away to another coun-
tfy, but he cannot appreciate the fact that such a one,
wherever he may settle, whether in New York or in
Australia, remains a German in blood and breeding, if
not in political sympathies. German emigrants may
hate German officialism and cheerfully renounce all
political allegiance to the land of their birth, but never-
theless they and their children and their children's
children will cherish a pride in the past history of their
race; will cultivate good relations with those of their
own nation, and when their turn comes to travel, their
mind will turn instinctively to an ancestral home in the
Fatherland.

Germany to-day reaps a rich harvest from the trade
with America, thanks to colonists that have settled
under the Stars and Stripes because they could not
find what they wanted at home.

So long as official Germany permits German-Amer-
icans to return and enjoy themselves in the " Father-
land " without too much police inquisition, she will
[ 356 ]

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLONIZATION

reap a steadily increasing harvest from this source, and
little by little, even officials will appreciate the fact that
emigrants to other colonies are not a dead loss to the
mother country.

On the other hand, there is a great advantage to the
white race in colonizing the world on a more cosmo-
politan plan than merely by a colonial replica of the
mother country. Europe, through centuries of war-
fare, religious intolerance, and political narrow-mind-
edness, has produced barriers between nations. The
administrative organs of different European countries
print perpetually statements calculated to create a false
patriotism which delights in conceiving all other na-
tions as bad.

Colonists do not know the narrow nationalism that
rages in the home countries. The German, French,
and English merchants of Hong-Kong, Cape Town, or
New York smile at the bundle of lies which their home
papers circulate. They know one another — and that is
enough. In India the German merchant admires the
magnanimity of the British, who, though conquerors
of that Empire, have nevertheless treated the people
with a measure of good government amazing in its ex-
tent and efficacy. Such a merchant cannot but be
shocked when the Berlin press comments upon au Ind-
ian famine as an event brought about by British cruel-
ty and misrule! The colonist that settles under his own
flag and sees only those of his own way of thinking,
gains something of bnadth and j)olitical experience,
but he wluj benefits most is one who emerges from the
jjoisonons atmosphere of international recrimination
and ill IJK course of a few days' steaming emerges in
I 357 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

a community where men of all nations are working
shoulder to shoulder in the task of subduing nature —
governing native races — carrying on commerce — de-
veloping the resources of the earth.

These are the people that profit most by the
precious lessons of colonization, these are the ones
that should be encouraged by the home government,
these are the true missionaries, the men who smooth
away race friction, who cast aside national spites, who
pave the way for the millennium of Free Trade — good-
will among nations.

[358]

XXXV

THE AMERICAN AS A COLONIST

"/ will make them conform or I will harry them out of the
land.'''' — ^James I. in the Conference about Puritans at Hampton
Court.

The Message of 1901. — '^The ^een commands me to express
through you, to the people of Australia, her 'Majesty's heartfelt in-
terest in the inauguration of the Commonwealth, and her earnest
wish that, under Divine Providence, it may ensure the increased
prosperity and well-being of her loyal and beloved subjects in Aus-
tralia. ' '

Spread of New Englanders over all North America — Capacity for
Local Self-government

UP to the year 1898, when the United States sud-
denly and violently rose to the rank of a colo-
nial power, Americans were habitually rep^ardcd
as far outside of European combinations on this sub-
ject. Old world writers on colonization, while they
honored Russia and even Denmark with a cliaptcr,
gave no thoujj^ht to America after her separation from
England in 1783.

And yet the United States of 1783 has been the
mother of a colonizing family worthy of the best An-
glo-Saxon traditions whirh they brought from the
mother conntry. American colonization is the very
antithesis of that which k'lissia has cidtivated and to
wiiich so many writers poinl with ill-groimdcil ad-
l 359 J

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

miration. The Czar, with an administrative machin-
ery adapted to his monotonous millions of illiterate
serfs, has sown Siberia with a crop whose quantity ex-
cites amazement, but whose quality calls forth sorrow.
The histor>^ of American colonization is reflected in
the family chronicles of hundreds who, under the spur
of political or religious intolerance, came of their own
free will and at their own expense to a land where
the liberty they sought was rendered the more sweet
by the dangers with which it was associated. As
children were born and the little communities ex-
panded, the rising generation showed the same eager-
ness for new adventure as had characterized the orig-
inal settlers, and thus we find an English family, which
in 1620 landed in Massachusetts Bay, thirty years
afterward sending representatives westward toward
the Connecticut River, in another generation settling
about Hartford or New Haven; next the name appears
for the first time on the banks of the Hudson, and an-
other generation finds it contesting with Frenchmen
on the frontiers of the present State of New York.

So on, from generation to generation, the hardy New
England stock has propagated itself, from the Scotch-
like stony soil of ]\Iassachusetts, westward toward the
Great Lakes, the Valley of the Mississippi, and be-
yond; conquering the wilderness; asking no favors of
government; taxing themselves for school-houses and
churches; fighting the Indians; establishing home-
steads, villages, towns, and ultimately States, which in
due course of time were, at their own request, ad-
mitted into the American Union.

New England has furnished the best type of the
I 360 ]

THE AMERICAN AS A COLONIST

American colonist, although, had there been no New-
England, Virginia and her neighbors would have still
furnished the world with colonial leaders in plenty.

The introduction of negro slavery into the United
States was a political and economic error, and retarded
in many w^ays the fullest development of the States
which tolerated it. Without discussing that question
here, we note only the fact that in a small section of
New England are concentrated, and have been for
more than two centuries, the intellectual training-
schools from which have gone forth generation
after generation of shrewd, ambitious, well-disci-
plined and well-informed young men, wdio, as school-
teachers, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, have uniformly
marched with the pioneers toward the western frontier.
We have only to glance at the dull mass of French Ca-
nadians and compare them with an equal body of New
Englanders a hundred years ago, to illustrate our
meaning.

The notable feature of American colonization, par-
ticularly from the beginning of this century to the
settlement of California after the discovery of gold,
is the universal i)raclicc of vohintarily clubbing to-
gether for offensive and defensive purposes; total ab-
sence of any administrative interference on the part
of the central government, and an e(|ually creditable
absence of demand for governnunl iiiU'iferenco on the
part of the colonists. There are one or two apparent
excepti(jns, but they are trilling compared to the
whole niovcniciil, wliicli in lliis n-iitin y altMir lias I'iiiu-
inatcd l"'rencli and Spanish inlhu'nce from the whole
of the Nnitli Anici i( an ( "< mtinrul , lias spread the Eng-

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

lish language throughout its boundaries without
administrative coercion, and has reared a monument
to self-government exceeding the most fantastic polit-
ical dreams of our forefathers.

The Anglo-Saxons who trekked across the Alle-
gheny Mountains at the close of the i8th century and
reared their log cabins in the forests of Tennessee and
Kentucky, cut themselves off from civilization quite as
much as did the Boers who invaded the Kaffir strong-
holds of inner Africa. The Republic of Texas is a
colonial romance. The latter-day Yankee, with the
hatred of Spain in his blood, fell foul of Spanish set-
tlements in the great southwestern territories, where
Spanish Priests and Mexican Alcaldes represented the
same civilization which had invited the freebooting
expeditions of Drake and Raleigh three centuries ago.
The individual American, whatever his Government
might order, could not tolerate the bastard Spanish
institutions which flourished over California, Arizona,
New Mexico, and Texas at the time when the frontiers
of the United States were being pushed further and
further toward the setting sun. The conflict was in-
evitable, and the result equally certain. Spanish in-
stitutions under Mexican government were hopelessly
swamped under the tide of advancing colonists, and
to-day the three centuries of Spanish or Mexican rule
are recalled only by a few ruins of priestly missions — a
few picturesque Spanish names, which have enriched
the vocabulary of miners and cowboys.

During all this colonizing period, notably the first
fifty years of this century. Englishmen were colonizing
Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape of Good Hope,
[ 362 ]

THE AMERICAN AS A COLONIST

and, in addition, pouring a steady stream into Canada
and the United States. The Anglo-Saxon was doing
his share in every part of the world — with or without
government guidance.

Germany, too, through the pressure of bad govern-
ment at home, was sending forth a large annual vol-
ume of discontented emigrants; but unfortunately,
according to Professor Woker, no satisfactory esti-
mate has yet been made of their number. Official
statements on this subject are necessarily imperfect,
because the several German governments placed ad-
ministrative obstructions in the way of emigration,
and therefore a large proportion of those who left their
country did so secretly under false names, or under the
pretence of belonging to other nations.

The political persecution which followed the revo-
lution of 1848, brought from Germany the first con-
siderable consignment of men eminent as leaders of
thought. America is studded to-day with German
social organizations which keep up intimate relations
with the literary and political life of the Fatherland.
Scarcely an American town that has not a German
Turn Vcrcin or Licdcrtafcl. New York, Chicago, and
similar centres have German clubs testifying to a
wealthy and large mcniborship. The best German
actors hnd ample encouragement for a, trip across the
Atlantic, even though they limit their pcrfonn.inccs to
exclusively German audiences. The German |)apers of
America are in many instances not t)nly better e(lite<l
than some nulropolitan dailies of my acquaintance,
but T know of no daily of Picrlin that does not siilTor
Ijy compari.son with I lie Shuils /lilnti}^ of New

THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS

York. These and many other signs speak well
for the high average of general intelligence and cult-
ure that characterizes the millions of Germans who
form a precious portion of American citizenship.
They have come to America in order to become Amer-
ican, and they have, from the very beginning, shared
all the rights of Americans.

But it is strange that in all these years, particularly
when America was a wilderness from the Alleghenies
to the Pacific, not a single German community should
have endeavored to perpetuate its own language and
institutions, after the fashion of the Boers in the Trans-
vaal or the Mormons in Utah. There was no adminis-
trative machinery to hinder them; on the contrary, the
land was open to all comers and no embarrassing
questions were asked.

But as nations are credited by some philosopher
with producing the particular kind of Jew that suits
them best, so in the long run the monarchs of a coun-
try bear a certain resemblance to the people over
whom they rule — and it is no mere accident that Ger-
many has developed a long line of rulers whose atti-
tude toward the people has been that of a military
commander rather than of a constitutional executive.

That may in a degree explain the striking inapti-
tude of the Gei;man for colonial self-government, many
as are his virtues in other respects.

But the American has by no means limited his colo-
nial enterprise to his own country, vast as it is. He has
sought his interests in every part of the world where
adventure or fortune favored, whether in the gold-
fields of Australia or South Africa; a fihbustering trip
[ 364 ]

THE AMERICAN AS A COLONIST

to South America; a commission in the Egyptian
army, or as a trader to China. There are few corners
of the world where the traveller will not run across
prosperous Yankees who are perfectly at home in the
land of their adoption, see as little of their consul as
possible, avail themselves of every advantage afforded
by such political rights as they can secure, and in short,
get on well with their neighbors and the world at large.
In the British colonies and the treaty ports of bar-
barous countries, Americans and English naturally
drift together in any schemes for improvement or
revolution. They understand one another instinc-
tively; they both have the same political ideals of law,
liberty, and justice — they are both trained in the same
political school for securing these objects. Thus,
whether in Johannesburg or Shanghai, Barbados or
Cairo — in the Club of Manila or the Casino of Buenos
Ayres, wherever there are representatives of different
nationalities, there the two wings of the Anglo-Saxon
family fold together in mutual support. America has
no need to encourage emigration, for she has yet land
enough and to spare, but when density of population
shall afflict this continent as it does the countries of the
Old World, then will be developed a monster coloniz-
ing force. For if, with plenty of room at home, the
Yankee has, nevertheless, overspread North America,
and even dripped over into other colonics, what may
we not expect when the iiuHiilive of luiiiger is added to
that of mere adventure or national ambition!

r 365 1

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