♦<*>♦<« ♦<«♦»>♦»>♦«> twi QHILDREN OF THE NATIONS POULTNEY BIGELOW LTNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES ^ THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIONS A STUDY OF COLONIZATION AND ITS PROBLEMS By 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 M c: M I Copyright, igoi, hy McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Trow Directory Printing <5f Bookbinding Company New York To 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 5 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 I 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)(MilS 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•) 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 ] VI 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 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 XV 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'lie revenues of tli<; lirilisli colony for I Scjo were almost $^, 000, 000, wliile in tli(r n«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 XX 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[ 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 " in. 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 rinilialiv(.- Iiaidic ^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 ] 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 an7 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 ') 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- 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*^v,...^^ H ■■■■' •'^H^'^^-^ .» .'I':-