The fears of the eugenist about the quality of the population are far more reasonable than the invectives of the fanatic about its defective quant.i.ty. Of the latter cla.s.s we may say with Havelock Ellis that "those who seek to restore the birth-rate of half a century ago are engaged in a task which would be criminal if it were not based on ignorance, and which is in any case fatuous." And yet I hope to show before the close of this article that for two or three generations the British Empire could absorb a considerable increase, and that the Government might with advantage stimulate this by schemes of colonisation. The lament of the eugenist resounds in all countries alike. The German complains that the Poles, whom he considers an inferior race, breed like rabbits, while the gifted exponents of _Kultur_ only breed like hares. The American is nervous about the numbers of the negro; he has more reason to be nervous about the fecundity of the Slav and South Italian immigrant. Everywhere the tendency is for the superior stock to dwindle till it becomes a small aristocracy. The Americans of British descent are threatened with this fate. Pride and a high standard of living are not biological virtues. The man who needs and spends little is the ultimate inheritor of the earth. I know of no instance in history in which a ruling race has not ultimately been ousted or absorbed by its subjects. Complete extermination or expropriation is the only successful method of conquest. The Anglo-Saxon race has thus established itself in the greater part of Britain, and in Australasia. In North America it has destroyed the Indian hunter, who could not be used for industrial purposes; but the temptation to exploit the negro and the cheaper European races was too strong to be resisted, and Nature"s heaviest penalty is now being exacted against the descendants of our st.u.r.dy colonists. We did not lose America in the eighteenth century; we are losing it now. As for South Africa, the Kaffir can live like a gentleman (according to his own ideas) on six months" ill-paid work every year; the Englishman finds an income of 200 too small. There is only one end to this kind of colonisation. The danger at home is that the larger part of the population is now beginning to insist upon a scale of remuneration and a standard of comfort which are incompatible with any survival-value. We all wish to be privileged aristocrats, with no serfs to work for us. Dame Nature cares nothing for the babble of politicians and trade-union regulations. She says to us what Plotinus, in a remarkable pa.s.sage, makes her say: "You should not ask questions; you should try to understand. _I am not in the habit of talking._" In Nature"s school it is a word and a blow, and the blow first. Before the close of this article I will return to the eugenic problem, and will consider whether anything can be done to solve it.
At the present time, when an apparently internecine conflict is raging between the British Empire and Germany, a more detailed comparison of the vital statistics of the two countries will be read with interest. In England and Wales the birth-rate culminated in 1876 at a little over 36, after slowly rising from 33 in 1850. From 1876 the line of decline is almost straight, down to the ante-war figure of about 24. In Prussia, owing partly to wars, the fluctuations have been violent. In 1850 the figure (omitting decimals) was 39; in 1855, 34; in 1859, 40; in 1871, 34; in 1875, nearly 41. From this date, as in England, the steady decline began. In 1907 the rate had fallen to 33; in 1913 (German Empire) to 27.5. Here we may notice the abnormally high rate in the years following the great war of 1870, a phenomenon which was marked also throughout Europe after the Napoleonic wars. We may also notice that the decline has been of late slightly more rapid in Germany, falling from a high birth-rate, than in England, where the maximum was never so high. Another fact which comes out when the German figures are more carefully examined is that urbanisation in Germany has a sterilising effect which is not operative in England. Prinzing gives the comparative figures of _legitimate_ fertility for Prussia as follows:
1879-1882 1894-1897
Berlin 23.8 16.9[20]
Other great towns 26.7 23.5 Towns of 20,000 to 100,000 26.8 25.7 Small towns 27.8 25.9 Country districts 28.8 29.0
Now urbanisation is going on even more rapidly in Germany than in England. The death-rate in England and Wales rose from 21 in 1850 to 23.5 in 1854; after sharp fluctuations it reached 23.7 in 1864; since then it has declined to its present figure (in normal times) of 14. In Prussia after the war of 1870 and the small-pox epidemic of 1871, there has been a steady fall from 26 to 17.3 (German Empire in 1911). The net increase is only slightly larger (in proportion to the population) in Germany than in England; and the increase in our great colonies, especially in Australasia, is much higher than in Germany. There is therefore no reason to suppose that a rapid alteration is going on to our disadvantage.
It is widely believed that the Roman Catholic Church, by sternly forbidding the artificial limitation of families, is increasing its numbers at the expense of the non-Catholic populations. To some extent this is true. The Prussian figures for 1895-1900 give the number of children per marriage as:
Both parents Catholic 5 Both parents Protestant 4 Both parents Jews 3.7
An examination of the entries in "Who"s Who" gives about the same proportion for well-to-do families in England. The Catholic birth-rate of the Irish is nearly 40.[21] The French-Canadians are among the most prolific races in the world. On the other hand, their infant mortality is very high, and it is said that French-Canadian parents take these losses philosophically. It is quite a different question whether it is ultimately to the advantage of a nation which desires to increase its numbers to profess the Roman Catholic religion. The high birth-rates are all in unprogressive Catholic populations. When a Catholic people begins to be educated, the priests apparently lose their influence upon the habits of the laity, and a rapid decline in the births at once sets in.
The most advanced countries which did not accept the Reformation, France and Belgium, are precisely those in which parental prudence has been carried almost to excess. We must also remember that the Dutch Boers, who are Protestants, but who live under simple conditions not unlike those of the French-Canadians, are equally prolific, as were our own colonists in the United States before that country was industrialised.
The advantages in numbers gained by Roman Catholicism are likely to be confined to half-empty countries, where there is really room for more citizens, and where social ambition and the love of comfort are the chief motives for restricting the family.
The population of a settled country cannot be increased at will; it depends on the supply of food. The choice is between a high birth-rate combined with a high death-rate, and a low birth-rate with a low death-rate. The great saving of life which has been effected during the last fifty years carries with it the necessity of restricting the births. The next question to be considered is how this restriction is to be brought about. The oldest methods are deliberate neglect and infanticide. In China, where authorities differ as to the extent to which female infants are exposed, the practice certainly prevails of feeding infants whom their mothers are unable to suckle on rice and water, which soon terminates their existence. Such methods would happily find no advocates in Europe. The very ancient art of procuring miscarriage is a criminal act in most civilised countries, but it is practised to an appalling extent. Hirsch, who quotes his authorities, estimates that 2,000,000 births are so prevented annually in the United States, 400,000 in Germany, 50,000 in Paris, and 19,000 in Lyons. In our own country it is exceedingly common in the northern towns, and attempts are now being made to prohibit the sale of certain preparations of lead which are used for this purpose. Alike on grounds of public health and of morality, it is most desirable that this mischievous practice should be checked. Its great prevalence in the United States is to be attributed mainly to the drastic legislation in that country against the sale and use of preventives, to which many persons take objection on moral or aesthetic grounds, but which is surely on an entirely different level from the destruction of life that has already begun. The "Comstock" legislation in America has done unmixed harm. It is worse than useless to try to put down by law a practice which a very large number of people believes to be innocent, and which must be left to the taste and conscience of the individual. To the present writer it seems a _pis aller_ which high-minded married persons should avoid if they can practise self-restraint. Whatever injures the feeling of "sanctification and honour" with which St. Paul bids us to regard these intimacies of life, whatever tends to profane or degrade the sacraments of wedded love, is so far an evil. But this is emphatically a matter in which every man and woman must judge for themselves, and must refrain from judging others.
In every modern civilised country population is restricted partly by the deliberate postponement of marriage. In many cases this does no harm whatever; but in many others it gravely diminishes the happiness of young people, and may even cause minor disturbances of health. Moreover, it would not be so widely adopted but for the tolerance, on the part of society, of the "great social evil," the opprobrium of our civilisation.
In spite of the failure hitherto of priests, moralists, and legislators to root it out, and in spite of the acceptance of it as inevitable by the majority of Continental opinion, I believe that this abomination will not long be tolerated by the conscience of the free and progressive nations. It is notorious that the whole body of women deeply resents the wrong and contumely done by it to their s.e.x, and that, if democracy is to be a reality, the immolation of a considerable section of women drawn from the poorer cla.s.ses cannot be suffered to continue. It is also plain to all who have examined the subject that the campaign against certain diseases, the malignity and wide diffusion of which are being more fully realised every year, cannot be successful through medical methods alone.
If the inst.i.tution in question were abolished, medical science would soon reduce these scourges to manageable limits, and might at last exterminate them altogether; but while it continues there is no hope of doing this. I believe then that the time will come when the trade in vice will cease; and if I am right, early marriages will become the rule in all cla.s.ses. This will render the population question more acute, especially as the diseases which we hope to extirpate are the commonest cause both of sterility and of infant mortality. Under this pressure, we must expect to see preventive methods widely accepted as the least of unavoidable evils.
When we reflect on the whole problem in its widest aspects, we see that civilised humanity is confronted by a Choice of Hercules. On the one side, biological law seems to urge us forward to the struggle for existence and expansion. The nation in that case will have to be organised on the lines of greatest efficiency. A strong centralised government will occupy itself largely in preventing waste. All the resources of the nation must be used to the uttermost. Parks must be cut up into allotments; the unproductive labours of the scholar and thinker must be jealously controlled and limited. Inefficient citizens must be weeded out; wages must be low and hours of work long. Moreover, the State must be organised for war; for its neighbours, we must suppose, are following the same policy. Then the fierce extra-group compet.i.tion must come to its logical arbitrament in a life and death struggle. And war between two over-peopled countries, for both of which more elbow-room is a vital necessity, must be a war of complete expropriation or extermination. It must be so, for no other kind of war can achieve its object. The horrors of the present conflict will be as nothing compared with a struggle between two highly-organised State socialisms, each of which knows that it must either colonise the territory of the other or starve. It is idle to pretend that such a necessity will never arise. Another century of increase in Europe like that of the nineteenth century would bring it very near. If this policy is adopted, we shall see all the princ.i.p.al States organising themselves with a perfection far greater than that of Germany to-day, but taking German methods as their model; and the end will be the extermination of the smaller or looser organisations. Such a prospect may well fill us with horror; and it is terrible to find some of the ablest thinkers of Germany, such as Ernst Troeltsch, writing calm elegies over "the death of Liberalism" and predicting the advent of an era of cut-throat international compet.i.tion.
Juvenal speaks of the folly of _propter vitam vivendi perdere causas_; and who would care to live in such a world? But does Nature care whether we enjoy our lives or not?
The other choice is that which France has made for herself; it is on the lines of Plato"s ideal State. Each country is to be, as far as possible, self-sufficing. If it cannot grow sufficient food for itself, it must of course export its coal or its gold, or the products of its industry and ingenuity. But it must know approximately what "the number of the State" (as Plato said) should be. It must limit its population to that number, and the limit will be fixed, not at the maximum number who can live there anyhow, but at the maximum number who can "live well."
The object aimed at will not be constant expansion, but well-being. The energies liberated from the pitiless struggle for existence will be devoted to making social life wiser, happier, more harmonious and more beautiful. Have we any reason to hope that this policy is not contrary to the hard laws which Nature imposes on every species in the world?
In the first place, would such a State escape being devoured by some brutal "expanding" neighbour? What would have happened to France if she had stood alone in this war? The danger is real; but we may answer that France, as a matter of fact, did not stand alone, because other nations thought her too precious to be sacrificed. And the completely organised compet.i.tive State which I have imagined would be a far more unlovely place than Germany, and more unpleasant to live in. The spectacle of a saner and happier polity next door would break up the purely compet.i.tive State from within; the strain would be too great for human nature. We cannot argue confidently from the struggle for existence among the lower animals to our own species. For a long time past, human evolution has been directed, not to living anyhow, but to living in a certain way. We are guided by ideals for the future, by purposes winch we clearly set before ourselves, in a way which is impossible to the brutes. These purposes are common to the large majority of men. No State can long maintain a rigid and oppressive organisation, except under the threat of danger; and a nation which aims only at perfecting its own culture is not dangerous to its neighbours. It is probable that without the supposed menace of another military Power on its eastern flank German militarism would have begun to crumble.
In the second place, would the absence of sharp compet.i.tion within the group lead to racial degeneration? This is a difficult question to answer. Perhaps a diminution of pugnacity and of the means to gratify this instinct would not be a misfortune. But it is certainly true that, if the operation of natural selection is suspended, rational selection must take its place. Failing this, reversion to a lower type is inevitable. The infant science of eugenics will have much to say on this subject hereafter; at present we are only discovering how complex and obscure the laws of heredity are. The State of the future will have to step in to prevent the propagation of undesirable variations, whether physical or mental, and will doubtless find means to encourage the increase of families that are well endowed by Nature.
a.s.suming that a nation as a whole prefers a policy of this kind, and aims at such an equilibrium of births and deaths as will set free the energies of the people for the higher objects of civilised life, how will it escape the cacogenic effects of family restriction in the better cla.s.ses combined with reckless multiplication among the refuse which always exists in a large community? This is a problem which has not yet been solved. Public opinion is not ready for legislation against the multiplication of the unfit, and it is not easy to see what form such legislation could take. Many of the very poor are not undesirable parents; we must not confound economic prosperity with biological fitness. The "submerged tenth" should be raised, where it is possible, into a condition of self-respect and responsibility; but they must not be allowed to be a burden upon the efficient; and the upper and middle cla.s.ses should simplify their habits so far as to make marriage and parenthood possible for the young professional man. Special care should be taken that taxation is so adjusted as not to penalise parenthood in the socially valuable middle cla.s.s.
For some time to come we are likely to see, in all the leading nations, a restricted birth-rate, prompted by desire for social betterment, combined, however, with concessions to the rival policy of commercial expansion, growing numbers, and military preparation. The nations will not cease to fear and suspect each other in the twentieth century, and any one nation which chooses to be a nuisance to Europe will keep back the progress and happiness of the rest. The prospect is not very bright; a too generous confidence might betray some nation into irretrievable disaster. But the bracing influence of national danger may perhaps be beneficial. For we have to remember the pitiable decay of the ancient cla.s.sical civilisation, which was partly due, as we have found, to a desire for comfortable and easy living. There have been signs that many of our countrymen no longer think the strenuous life worth while; part of our resentment against Germany resembles the annoyance of an old-fashioned firm, disturbed in its comfortable security by the compet.i.tion of a young and more vigorous rival. It is even suggested that after the war we should protect ourselves against German compet.i.tion by tariff walls. This abandonment of the free trade policy on which our prosperity is built would soon bring our over-populated island to ruin.
In conclusion, if we leave the distant future to fend for itself when the time comes, what should be our policy with regard to population for the next fifty years? I am led to an opinion which may seem to run counter to the general purport of this article. For though the British Isles are even dangerously full, so that we are liable to be starved out if we lose the command of the sea, the British Empire is very far from being over-populated. In Canada and Australasia there is probably room for nearly 200,000,000 people. These countries are remarkably healthy for Northern Europeans; there is no reason why they should not be as rich and powerful as the United States are now. We hope that we have saved the Empire from German cupidity--for the time; but we cannot tell how long we may be undisturbed. It would be criminal folly not to make the most of the respite granted us, by peopling our Dominions with our own stock, while yet there is time. This, however, cannot be done by casual and undirected emigration of the old kind. We need an Imperial Board of Emigration, the officials of which will work in co-operation with the Governments of our Dominions. These Governments, it may be presumed, will be anxious, after the war, to strengthen the colonies by increasing their population and developing their resources. They, like ourselves, have had a severe fright, and know that prompt action is necessary. Systematic plans of colonisation should be worked out, and emigrants drafted off to the Dominions as work can be found for them.
Young women should be sent out in sufficient numbers to keep the s.e.xes equal. We know now that our young people who emigrate are by no means lost to the Empire. The Dominions have shown that in time of need they are able and willing to defend the mother country with their full strength. Indeed, a young couple who emigrate are likely to be of more value to the Empire than if they had stayed at home; and their chances of happiness are much increased if they find a home in a part of the world where more human beings are wanted. But without official advice and help emigration is difficult. Parents do not know where to send their sons, nor what training to give them. Mistakes are made, money is wasted, and bitter disappointment caused. All this may be obviated if the Government will take the matter up seriously. The real issue of this war is whether our great colonies are to continue British; and the question will be decided not only on the field of battle, but by the action of our Government and people after peace is declared. The next fifty years will decide for all time whether those magnificent and still empty countries are to be the home of great nations speaking our language, carrying on our inst.i.tutions, and valuing our traditions. When the future of our Dominions is secure, the part of England as a World-Power will have been played to a successful issue, and we may be content with a position more consonant with the small area of these islands.
I believe, then, that if facilities for migration are given by Government action, it will be not only possible but desirable for the increase in the population of the Empire, taken as a whole, to be maintained during the twentieth century. It is, of course, possible that chemical discoveries and other scientific improvements may greatly increase the yield of food from the soil, and that in this way the final limit to the population of the earth may be further off than now seems probable. But within a few centuries, at most, this limit must be reached; and after that we may hope that the world will agree to maintain an equilibrium between births and deaths, that being the most stable and the happiest condition in which human beings can live together.[22]
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Myres, _Eugenics Review_, April, 1915.
[11] Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Kultur der Gegenwart_, 2, 4, 1.
[12] Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates all had three sons, and apparently no daughters.--Zimmern, _The Greek Commonwealth_, p. 331.
[13] _Cf. (e.g.)_ Plato, _Theaetetus_, 149.
[14] We may suppose that the disproportion of the s.e.xes, caused by female infanticide, was about rectified by the deaths of males in battle and civic strife. We do not hear that the Greek had any difficulty in finding a wife.
[15] Families, he says, were limited to one or two "in order to leave these rich."
[16] The population of England and Wales is said to have been 4,800,000 in 1600, and 6,500,000 in 1750. It was 8,890,000 in 1801, 32,530,000 in 1901, and approximately 37,000,000 in 1914.
[17] Statistics are wanting for the early part of the industrial revolution, but my study of pedigrees leads me to think that the average duration of life was considerably increased in the eighteenth century.
[18] _The Family and the Nation_, p. 143.
[19] The births per 1000 married men under fifty-five in the different cla.s.ses are:--Upper and middle cla.s.s, 119; Intermediate, 132; Skilled workmen, 153; Intermediate, 158; Unskilled workmen, 213.
[20] It must be remembered that the illegitimate birth-rate in Berlin is scandalously high.
[21] The crude birth-rate of Ireland is wholly misleading, because so many young couples emigrate before the birth of their first child.
[22] The possible effect of the labour movement in diminishing the population is considered in the next Essay.
The last two years have, in my opinion, made the outlook less favourable.
THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE
(THE GALTON LECTURE, 1919)
In the year 1890 Sir Charles Dilke ended his survey of "Greater Britain"
and its problems with the prediction that "the world"s future belongs to the Anglo-Saxon, the Russian, and the Chinese races." This was in the heyday of British imperialism, which was inaugurated by Seeley"s "Expansion of England" and Froude"s "Oceana," and which inspired Mr.
Chamberlain to proclaim at Toronto in 1887 that the "Anglo-Saxon stock is infallibly destined to be the predominant force in the history and civilisation of the world." It was an arrogant, but not truculent, mood, which reached its climax at the 1897 Jubilee, and rapidly declined during and after the Boer war. These writers and statesmen were utterly blind to the German peril, though the disciples of Treitschke were already working out a theory about the future destinies of the world, in which neither Great Britain nor Russia nor China counted for very much.
There were illusions on both sides of the North Sea, which had to be paid for in blood. In both countries imperialism was a sentiment curiously compounded of idealism and bombast, and supported by very doubtful science. In the case of Germany the distortion of facts was deliberate and monstrous. Not only was every schoolboy brought up on cooked population statistics and falsified geography, but the thick-set, brachycephalous Central European persuaded himself that he belonged to the pure Nordic race, the great blond beasts of Nietzsche, which, as he was taught, had already produced nearly all the great men in history, and was now about to claim its proper place as master of the world.
Political anthropology is no genuine science. Race and nationality are catchwords for which rulers find that their subjects are willing to fight, as they fought for what they called religion four hundred years ago. In reality, if we want to find a pure race, we must visit the Esquimaux, or the Fuegians, or the Pygmies; we shall certainly not find one in Europe. Our own imperialists had their illusions too, and we are not rid of them yet, because we do not realise that the fate of races is decided, not in the council-chamber or on the battle-field, but by the same laws of nature which determine the distribution of the various plants and animals of the world. It may be that by approaching our subject from this side we shall arrive at a more scientific, if a more chastened, antic.i.p.ation of our national future than was acceptable to the enthusiasts of expansion in the last twenty years of Queen Victoria"s reign.
The history of the world shows us that there have been three great human reservoirs which from time to time have burst their banks and flooded neighbouring countries. These are the Arabian peninsula, the steppes of Central Asia, and the lands round the Baltic, the original home of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples. The invaders in each case were pastoral folk, who were driven from their homes by over-population, or drought and famine, or the pressure of enemies behind them. It is easy for nomads to "trek," even for great distances; and till the discovery of gunpowder they were the most formidable of foes. The Arabs and Northern Europeans have founded great civilisations; the Mongol hordes have been an unmitigated curse to humanity. The invaders never kept their blood pure. The famous Jewish nose is probably Hitt.i.te, and certainly not Bedouin. There are no pure Turks in Europe, and the Hungarians have lost all resemblance to Mongols. The modern Germans seem to belong mainly to the round-headed Alpine race, which migrated into Europe in early times from the Asiatic highlands. In England there is a larger proportion of Nordic blood, because the Anglo-Saxons partially exterminated the natives; but the old Mediterranean race, which had made its way up the warm western coasts, still holds its own in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and the Western Highlands; and within the last hundred years, owing to frequent migrations, has mixed so thoroughly with the Anglo-Saxon stock that the English are becoming darker in each generation. This is not the result of a racial decay of the blonds, as the American, Dr. Charles Woodruff, supposes, but is to be accounted for by the fact that dark eyes seem to be a Mendelian dominant, and dark hair a more potent character than light. The inhabitants of these islands are nearly all long-headed, this being a characteristic of both the Nordic and Mediterranean races. The round-headed invaders, who perhaps brought with them the so-called Celtic languages at a remote period, and imposed them upon the inhabitants, seem to have left no other mark upon the population, though their type of head is prevalent over a great part of France.
The ability of races to flourish in climates other than their own is a question of supreme importance to historians and statesmen, and, it need not be said, to emigrants. But it is only lately that it has been studied scientifically, and the results are still tentative. German ethnologists, of what we may call the _aedicephalous_ school, already referred to, regard it as one of the tragedies of nature that the n.o.ble Nordic race, to which they think they belong, dies out when it penetrates southwards. In accordance with this law, the yellow-haired Achaeans decayed in Greece, the Lombards in North Italy, the Vandals in Spain and Africa. After a few generations of life in a warm climate the Aryan stock invariably disappears. We shall show reasons for thinking that this theory is much exaggerated; but there is undoubtedly some truth in it. It has been found to be impossible for white men to colonise India, Burma, tropical America, and West Africa. It has been said that "there is in India no third generation of pure English blood."
It is notoriously difficult to bring up even one generation of white children in India. The French cannot maintain themselves without race admixture in Martinique and Guadaloupe, nor the Dutch in Java, though it is said that the expectation of life for a European in Java is as good as in his own country. It seems to be also true that the blond race suffers most in a hot climate. In the Philippines it was observed that the fair-haired soldiers in the American army succ.u.mbed most readily to disease. In Queensland the Italian colonists are said to stand the heat better than the English, and Mr. Roosevelt, among other items of good advice which he bestowed so liberally on the European nations, advised us to populate the torrid parts of Australia with immigrants from the Latin races. In Natal the English families who are settled in the country are said to be enervated by the climate; and on the high plateaux of the interior our countrymen find it necessary to pay periodical visits to the coast, to be unbraced. The early deaths and not infrequent suicides of Rand magnates may indicate that the air of the Transvaal is too stimulating for a life of high tension and excitement.
There are even signs that the same may be true in a minor degree of the United States of America. Both the capitalist and the working man, if they come of English stock, seem to wear out more quickly than at home; and the sterility of marriages among the long settled American families is so p.r.o.nounced that it can hardly be due entirely to voluntary restriction of parentage. The effects of an unsuitable climate are especially shown in nervous disorders, and are therefore likely to tell most heavily on those who engage in intellectual pursuits, and perhaps on women rather more than on men. The sterilising effects of women"s higher education in America are incontrovertible, though this inference is hotly denied in England. At Holyoake College it was found that only half the lady graduates afterwards married, and the average family of those who did marry was less than two children. At Bryn Mawr only 43 per cent, married, and had 0.84 children each; the average family per graduate was therefore 0.37. If it be objected that new immigrants and their children are healthy and vigorous in America, it may be truly answered that the effects of an unfavourable climate are manifested fully only in the third and later generations. The argument may be further supported by the fate of black men who try to settle in Europe.
Their strongly pigmented skin, which seems to protect them from the actinic rays of the tropical sun, so noxious to Europeans, and their broad nostrils, which inhale a larger number of tubercle bacilli than the narrow nose-slits of the Northerner, are disadvantages in a temperate climate. In any case, of the many thousands of negro servants who lived in England in the eighteenth century, it would be difficult to find a single descendant.
But there are other factors in the problem which should make us beware of hasty generalisations. It is obvious that since the American Republic contains many climates in its vast area, there may be parts of it which are perfectly healthy for Anglo-Saxons, and other parts where they cannot live without degenerating. Very few athletes, we are told, come from south of the fortieth parallel of lat.i.tude. But the decline in the birth-rate is most marked in the older colonies, the New England States, where for a long period the English colonists, living mainly on the land, not only throve and developed a singularly virile type of humanity, but multiplied with almost unexampled rapidity. The same is true not only of the French Canadian farmers, but of the South African Boers, who rear enormous families in a climate very different from that of Holland. The inference is that Europeans living on the land may flourish in any tolerably healthy climate which is not tropical.
There are, in fact, two other causes besides climate which may prevent immigrants from multiplying in a new country. The first of these is the presence of microbic diseases to which the old inhabitants are wholly or partially immune, but which find a virgin soil in the bodies of the newcomers. The strongest example is the West Coast of Africa, of which Miss Mary Kingsley writes: "Yet remember, before you elect to cast your lot with the West Coasters, that 85 per cent, of them die of fever, or return home with their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that there is no getting acclimatised to the Coast. There are, it is true, a few men out there who, although they have been resident in West Africa for years, have never had fever, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand." There can be no acclimatisation where the weeding out is as drastic as this. Either the anopheles mosquito or the European must quit. There are parts of tropical America where the natives have actually been protected by the malaria, which keeps the white man at arm"s length. But more often the microbe is on the side of the civilised race, killing off the natives who have not run the gauntlet of town-life. The extreme reluctance of the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire to settle in the towns is easily accounted for if, as is probable, the towns killed them off whenever they attempted to live in them. The difference is remarkable between the fate of a conquered race which has become accustomed to town-life, and that of one which has not.
There are no "native quarters" in the towns of any country where the aborigines were nomads or tillers of the soil. To the North American Indian, residence in a town is a sentence of death. The American Indians were accustomed to none of our zymotic diseases except malaria. In the north they were destroyed wholesale by tuberculosis; in Mexico and Peru, where large towns existed before the conquest, they fared better. Fiji was devastated by measles; other barbarians by small-pox. Negroes have acquired, through severe natural selection, a certain degree of immunisation in America; but even now it is said that "every other negro dies of consumption." There are, however, two races, both long accustomed to town-life under horribly insanitary conditions, which have shown that they can live in almost any climate. These are the Jews and the Chinese. The medieval Ghetto exterminated all who were not naturally resistant to every form of microbic disease; the modern Jew, though often of poor physique, is hard to kill. The same may be said of the Chinaman, who, when at home, lives under conditions which would kill most Europeans.
The other factor, which is really promoting the gradual disappearance of the Anglo-Saxons from the United States, is of a very different character. The descendants of the old immigrants are on the whole the aristocracy of the country. Now it is a law which hardly admits of exceptions, that aristocracies do not maintain their numbers. The ruling race rules itself out; nothing fails like success. Gibbon has called attention to the extreme respect paid to long descent in the Roman Empire, and to the strange fact that, in the fourth century, no ingenuity of pedigree makers could deny that all the great families of the Republic were extinct, so that the second-rate plebeian family of the Anicii, whose name did appear in the Fasti, enjoyed a prestige far greater than that of the Howards and Stanleys in this country. Our own peerage consists chiefly of parvenus. Only six of our n.o.ble families, it is said, can trace their descent in the male line without a break to the fifteenth century. The peerage of Sweden tells the same tale. According to Gallon, the custom or law of primogeniture, combined with the habit of marrying heiresses who, as the last representatives of dwindling families, tend to be barren, is mainly responsible for this. Additional causes may be the greater danger which the officer-cla.s.s incurs in war, and, in former times, the executioner"s axe. In our own day the reluctance of rich and self-indulgent women to bear children is undoubtedly a factor in the infertility of the leisured cla.s.s.