[54] "Conquests, by uniting many nations under one sovereign, have formed great and powerful empires, out of the ruins of many petty states. In these great empires, men began insensibly to form clearer views of politics, juster and more salutary notions of government.
Experience taught them to avoid the errors which had occasioned the ruin of the nations whom they had subdued, and put them upon taking measures to prevent surprises, invasions, and the like misfortunes. With these views they fortified cities, secured such pa.s.ses as might have admitted an enemy into their country, and kept a certain number of troops constantly on foot. By these precautions, several States rendered themselves formidable to their neighbors, and none durst lightly attack powers which were every way so respectable. The interior parts of such mighty monarchies were no longer exposed to ravages and devastations.
War was driven far from the centre, and only infected the frontiers. The inhabitants of the country, and of the cities, began to breathe in safety. The calamities which conquests and revolutions had occasioned, disappeared; but the blessings which had grown out of them, remained.
Ingenious and active spirits, encouraged by the repose which they enjoyed, devoted themselves to study. _It was in the bosom of great empires the arts were invented, and the sciences had their birth._"--_Op. cit._, vol. i. Book 5, p. 326.--H.
[55] The history of every great empire proves the correctness of this remark. The conqueror never attempted to change the manners or local inst.i.tutions of the peoples subdued, but contented himself with an acknowledgment of his supremacy, the payment of tribute, and the rendering of a.s.sistance in war. Those who have pursued a contrary course, may be likened to an overflowing river, which, though it leaves temporary marks of its destructive course behind, must, sooner or later, return to its bed, and, in a short time, its invasions are forgotten, and their traces obliterated.--H.
[56] The most striking ill.u.s.tration of the correctness of this reasoning, is found in Roman history, the earlier portion of which is--thanks to Niebuhr"s genius--just beginning to be understood. The lawless followers of Romulus first coalesced with the Sabines; the two nations united, then compelled the Albans to raze their city to the ground, and settle in Rome. Next came the Latins, to whom, also, a portion of the city was allotted for settlement. These two conquered nations were, of course, not permitted the same civil and political privileges as the conquerors, and, with the exception of a few n.o.ble families among them (which probably had been, from the beginning, in the interests of the conquerors), these tribes formed the _plebs_. The distinction by nations was forgotten, and had become a distinction of _cla.s.ses_. Then began the progress which Mr. Gobineau describes. The Plebeians first gained their _tribunes_, who could protect their interests against the one-sided legislation of the dominant cla.s.s; then, the right of discussing and deciding certain public questions in the _comitia_, or public a.s.sembly. Next, the law prohibiting intermarriage between the Patricians and Plebeians was repealed; and thus, in course of time, the government changed from an oligarchical to a democratic form. I might go into details, or, I might mention other nations in which the same process is equally manifest, but I think the above well-known facts sufficient to bring the author"s idea into a clear light, and ill.u.s.trate its correctness. The history of the Middle Ages, the establishment of serfdom and its gradual abolition, also furnish an a.n.a.logue.
Wherever we see an hereditary aristocracy (whether called cla.s.s or caste), it will be found to originate in a race, which, if no longer _dominant_, was once conqueror. Before the Norman conquest, the English aristocracy was _Saxon_, there were no n.o.bles of the ancient British blood, east of Wales; after the conquest, the aristocracy was _Norman_, and nine-tenths of the n.o.ble families of England to this day trace, or pretend to trace, their origin to that stock. The n.o.ble French families, anterior to the Revolution, were almost all of _Frankish_ or _Burgundian_ origin. The same observation applies everywhere else. In support of my opinion, I have Niebuhr"s great authority: "Wherever there are castes, they are the consequence of foreign conquest and subjugation; it is impossible for a nation to submit to such a system, unless it be compelled by the calamities of a conquest. By this means only it is, that, contrary to the will of a people, circ.u.mstances arise which afterwards a.s.sume the character of a division into cla.s.ses or castes."--_Lect. on Anc. Hist._ (In the English translation, this pa.s.sage occurs in vol. i. p. 90.)
In conclusion, I would observe that, whenever it becomes politic to flatter the ma.s.s of the people, the fact of conquest is denied. Thus, English writers labored hard to prove that William the Norman did not, in reality, conquer the Saxons. Some time before the French Revolution, the same was attempted to be proved in the case of the Germanic tribes in France. L"Abbe du Bos, and other writers, taxed their ingenuity to disguise an obvious fact, and to hide the truth under a pile of ponderous volumes.--H.
[57] "It has been a favorite thesis with many writers, to pretend that the Saxon government was, at the time of the conquest, by no means subverted; that William of Normandy legally acceded to the throne, and, consequently, to the engagements of the Saxon kings.... But, if we consider that the manner in which the public power is formed in a state, is so very essential a part of its government, and that a thorough change in this respect was introduced into England by the conquest, we shall not scruple to allow that a _new government_ was established. Nay, as almost the whole landed property in the kingdom was, at that time, transferred to other hands, a new system of criminal justice introduced, and the language of the law moreover altered, the revolution may be said to have been such as is not, perhaps, to be paralleled in the history of any other country."--DE LOLME"S _English Const.i.tution_, c. i., _note_ c.--"The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman race. The subjugation of a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete."--MACAULAY"S _History of England_, vol. i. p. 10.--H.
[58] This a.s.sertion seems self-evident; it may, however, be not altogether irrelevant to the subject, to direct attention to a few facts in ill.u.s.tration of it. Great national calamities like wars, proscriptions, and revolutions, are like thunderbolts, striking mostly the objects of greatest elevation. We have seen that a conquering race generally, for a long time even after the conquest has been forgotten, forms an aristocracy, which generally monopolizes the prominent positions. In great political convulsions, this aristocracy suffers most, often in numbers, and always in proportion. Thus, at the battle of Cannae, from 5,000 to 6,000 Roman knights are said to have been slain, and, at all times, the officer"s dress has furnished the most conspicuous, and at the same time the most important target for the death-dealing stroke. In those fearful proscriptions, in which Sylla and Marius vied with each other in wholesale slaughter, the number of victims included two hundred senators and thirty-three ex-consuls. That the major part of the rest were prominent men, and therefore patricians, is obvious from the nature of this persecution. Revolutions are most often, though not always, produced by a fermentation among the ma.s.s of the population, who have a heavy score to settle against a cla.s.s that has domineered and tyrannized over them. Their fury, therefore, is directed against this aristocracy. I have now before me a curious doc.u.ment (first published in the _Prussian State-Gazette_, in 1828, and for which I am indebted to a little German volume, _Das Menschengeschlecht auf seinem Gegenwartigen Standpuncte_, by SMIDT-PHISELDECK), giving a list of the victims that fell under the guillotine by sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, from August, 1792, to the 27th of July, 1794, in a little less than two years. The number of victims there given is 2,774. Of these, 941 are of rank unknown. The remaining 1,833 may be divided in the following proportions:--
1,084 highest n.o.bility (princes, dukes, marshals of France, generals, and other officers, etc. etc.) 636 of the gentry (members of Parliament, judges, etc. etc.) 113 of the bourgeoisie (including non-commissioned officers and soldiers.) ----- 1,833
Such facts require no comments.--H.
[59] The recent insurrection in China has given rise to a great deal of speculation, and various are the opinions that have been formed respecting it. But it is now pretty generally conceded that it is a great national movement, and, therefore, must ultimately be successful.
The history of this insurrection, by Mr. Callery and Dr. Ivan (one the interpreter, and the other the physician of the French emba.s.sy in China, and both well known and reliable authorities) leaves no doubt upon the subject. One of the most significant signs in this movement is the cutting off the tails, and letting the hair grow, which is being practised, says Dr. Ivan, in all the great cities, and in the very teeth of the mandarins. (_Ins. in China_, p. 243.) Let not the reader smile at this seemingly puerile demonstration, or underrate its importance.
Apparently trivial occurrences are often the harbingers of the most important events. Were I to see in the streets of Berlin or Vienna, men with long beards or hats of a certain shape, I should know that serious troubles are to be expected; and in proportion to the number of such men, I should consider the catastrophe more or less near at hand, and the monarch"s crown in danger. When the Lombard stops smoking in the streets, he meditates a revolution; and France is comparatively safe, even though every street in Paris is barricaded, and blood flows in torrents; but when bands march through the streets singing the _ca ira_, we know that to-morrow the _Red Republic_ will be proclaimed. All these are silent, but expressive demonstrations of the prevalence of a certain principle among the ma.s.ses. Such a one is the cutting off of the tail among the Chinese. Nor is this a mere emblem. The shaved crown and the tail are the brands of conquest, a mark of degradation imposed by the Mantchoos on the subjugated race. The Chinese have never abandoned the hope of one day expelling their conquerors, as they did already once before. "Ever since the fall of the Mings," says Dr. Ivan, "and the accession of the Mantchoo dynasty, clandestine a.s.sociations--these intellectual laboratories of declining states--have been incessantly in operation. The most celebrated of these secret societies, that of the Triad, or the _three principles_, commands so extensive and powerful an organization, that its members may be found throughout China, and wherever the Chinese emigrate; so that there is no great exaggeration in the Chinese saying: "When three of us are together, the Triad is among us."" (_Hist. of the Insur. in Ch._, p. 112.) Again, the writer says: "The revolutionary impetus is now so strong, the affairs of the pretender or chief of the insurrection in so prosperous a condition, that the success of his cause has nothing to fear from the loss of a battle. It would require a series of unprecedented reverses to ruin his hopes" (p. 243 and 245).
I have written this somewhat lengthy note to show that Mr. Gobineau makes no rash a.s.sertion, when he says that the Mantchoos are about to experience the same fate as their Tartar predecessors.--H.
[60] The author might have mentioned Russia in ill.u.s.tration of his position. The star of no nation that we are acquainted with has suffered an eclipse so total and so protracted, nor re-appeared with so much brilliancy. Russia, whose history so many believe to date from the time of Peter the Great only, was one of the earliest actors on the stage of modern history. Its people had adopted Christianity when our forefathers were yet heathens; its princes formed matrimonial alliances with the monarchs of Byzantine Rome, while Charlemagne was driving the reluctant Saxon barbarians by thousands into rivers to be baptized _en ma.s.se_.
Russia had magnificent cities before Paris was more than a collection of hovels on a small island of the Seine. Its monarchs actually contemplated, and not without well-founded hopes, the conquest of Constantinople, while the Norman barges were devastating the coasts and river-sh.o.r.es of Western Europe. Nay, to that far-off, almost polar region, the enterprise of the inhabitants had attracted the genius of commerce and its attendants, prosperity and abundance. One of the greatest commercial cities of the first centuries after Christ, one of the first of the Hanse-Towns, was the great city of Novogorod, the capital of a republic that furnished three hundred thousand fighting men. But the east of Europe was not destined to outstrip the west in the great race of progress. The millions of Tartars, that, locust-like--but more formidable--marked their progress by hopeless devastation, had converted the greater portion of Asia into a desert, and now sought a new field for their savage exploits. Russia stood the first brunt, and its conquest exhausted the strength of the ruthless foe, and saved Western Europe from overwhelming ruin. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, five hundred thousand Tartar hors.e.m.e.n crossed the Ural Mountains. Slow, but gradual, was their progress. The Russian armies were trampled down by this countless cavalry. But the resistance must have been a brave and vigorous one, for few of the invaders lived long enough to see the conquest. Not until after a desperate struggle of fifty years, did Russia acknowledge a Tartar master. Nor were the conquerors even then allowed to enjoy their prize in peace. For two centuries more, the Russians never remitted their efforts to regain their independence. Each generation transmitted to its posterity the remembrance of that precious treasure, and the care of reconquering it.
Nor were their efforts unsuccessful. Year after year the Tartars saw the prize gliding from their grasp, and towards the end of the fifteenth century, we find them driven to the banks of the Volga, and the coasts of the Black Sea. Russia now began to breathe again. But, lo! during the long struggle, Pole and Swede had vied with the Tartar in stripping her of her fairest domains. Her territory extended scarce two hundred miles, in any direction from Moscow. Her very name was unknown. Western Europe had forgotten her. The same causes that established the feudal system there, had, in the course of two centuries and a half, changed a nation of freemen into a nation of serfs. The arts of peace were lost, the military element had gained an undue preponderance, and a band of soldiers, like the Pretorian Guards of Rome, made and deposed sovereigns, and shook the state to its very foundations. Yet here and there a vigorous monarch appeared, who controlled the fierce element, and directed it to the weal of the state. Smolensk, the fairest portion of the ancient Russian domain, was re-conquered from the Pole. The Swede, also, was forced to disgorge a portion of his spoils. But it was reserved for Peter the Great and his successors to restore to Russia the rank she had once held, and to which she was ent.i.tled.
I will not further trespa.s.s on the patience of the reader, now that we have arrived at that portion of Russian history which many think the first. I would merely observe that not only did Peter add to his empire no territory that had not formerly belonged to it, but even Catharine, at the first part.i.tion of Poland (I speak not of the subsequent ones), merely re-united to her dominion what once were integral portions. The rapid growth of Russia, since she has rea.s.sumed her station among the nations of the earth, is well known. Cities have sprung up in places where once the nomad had pitched his tent. A great capital, the handsomest in the world, has risen from the marsh, within one hundred and fifty years after the founder, whose name it perpetuates, had laid the first stone. Another has risen from the ashes, within less than a decade of years from the time when--a holocaust on the altar of patriotism--its flames announced to the world the vengeance of a nation on an intemperate aggressor.
Truly, it seems to me, that Mr. Gobineau could not have chosen a better ill.u.s.tration of his position, that the mere accident of conquest can not annihilate a nation, than this great empire, in whose history conquest forms so terrible and so long an episode, that the portion anterior to it is almost forgotten to this day.--H.
CHAPTER V.
THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY OF RACES IS NOT THE RESULT OF POLITICAL INSt.i.tUTIONS.
Antipathy of races--Results of their mixture--The scientific axiom of the absolute equality of men, but an extension of the political--Its fallacy--Universal belief in unequal endowment of races--The moral and intellectual diversity of races not attributable to inst.i.tutions--Indigenous inst.i.tutions are the expression of popular sentiments; when foreign and imported, they never prosper--Ill.u.s.trations: England and France--Roman Empire--European Colonies--Sandwich Islands--St. Domingo--Jesuit missions in Paraguay.
The idea of an innate and permanent difference in the moral and mental endowments of the various groups of the human species, is one of the most ancient, as well as universally adopted, opinions. With few exceptions, and these mostly in our own times, it has formed the basis of almost all political theories, and has been the fundamental maxim of government of every nation, great or small. The prejudices of country have no other cause; each nation believes in its own superiority over its neighbors, and very often different parts of the same nation regard each other with contempt. There seems to exist an instinctive antipathy among the different races, and even among the subdivisions of the same race, of which none is entirely exempt, but which acts with the greatest force in the least civilized or least civilizable. We behold it in the characteristic suspiciousness and hostility of the savage; in the isolation from foreign influence and intercourse of the Chinese and j.a.panese; in the various distinctions founded upon birth in more civilized communities, such as castes, orders of n.o.bility and aristocratic privileges.[61] Not even a common religion can extinguish the hereditary aversion of the Arab[62] to the Turk, of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria; or the bitter hostility of the Magyar and Sclave, who, without intermingling, have inhabited the same country for centuries. But as the different types lose their purity and become blended, this hostility of race abates; the maxim of absolute and permanent inequality is first discussed, then doubted. A man of mixed race or caste will not be apt to admit disparity in his double ancestry.
The superiority of particular types, and their consequent claims to dominion, find fewer advocates. This dominion is stigmatized as a tyrannical usurpation of power.[63] The mixture of castes gives rise to the political axiom that all men are equal, and, therefore, ent.i.tled to the same rights. Indeed, since there are no longer any distinct hereditary cla.s.ses, none can justly claim superior merit and privileges.
But this a.s.sertion, which is true only where a complete fusion has taken place, is applied to the whole human race--to all present, past, and future generations. The political axiom of equality which, like the bag of aeolus, contains so many tempests, is soon followed by the scientific.
It is said--and the more heterogeneous the ethnical elements of a nation are, the more extensively the theory gains ground--that, "all branches of the human family are endowed with intellectual capacities of the same nature, which, though in different stages of development, are all equally susceptible of improvement." This is not, perhaps, the precise language, but certainly the meaning. Thus, the Huron, by proper culture, might become the equal of the Englishman and Frenchman. Why, then, I would ask, did he never, in the course of centuries, invent the art of printing or apply the power of steam; why, among the warriors of his tribe, has there never arisen a Caesar or a Charlemagne, among his bards and medicine-men, a Homer or a Hippocrates?
These questions are generally met by advancing the influence of climate, local circ.u.mstances, etc. An island, it is said, can never be the theatre of great social and political developments in the same measure as a continent; the natives of a southern clime will not display the energy of those of the north; seacoasts and large navigable rivers will promote a civilization which could never have flourished in an inland region;--and a great deal more to the same purpose. But all these ingenious and plausible hypotheses are contradicted by facts. The same soil and the same climate have been visited, alternately, by barbarism and civilization. The degraded fellah is charred by the same sun which once burnt the powerful priest of Memphis; the learned professor of Berlin lectures under the same inclement sky that witnessed the miseries of the savage Finn.
What is most curious is, that while the belief of equality may influence inst.i.tutions and manners, there is not a nation, nor an individual but renders homage to the contrary sentiment. Who has not heard of the distinctive traits of the Frenchman, the German, the Spaniard, the English, the Russ. One is called sprightly and volatile, but brave; the other is sober and meditative; a third is noted for his gravity; a fourth is known by his coldness and reserve, and his eagerness of gain; a fifth, on the contrary, is notorious for reckless expense. I shall not express any opinion upon the accuracy of these distinctions, I merely point out that they are made daily and adopted by common consent. The same has been done in all ages. The Roman of Italy distinguished the Roman of Greece by the epithet _Graeculus_, and attributed to him, as characteristic peculiarities, want of courage and boastful loquacity. He laughed at the colonist of Carthage, whom he pretended to recognize among thousands by his litigious spirit and bad faith. The Alexandrians pa.s.sed for wily, insolent, and seditious. Yet the doctrine of equality was as universally received among the Romans of that period as it is among ourselves. If, then, various nations display qualities so different; if some are eager for war and glory; others, lovers of their ease and comfort, it follows that their destinies must be very diverse.
The strongest will act in the great tragedy of history the roles of kings and heroes, the weaker will be content with the humbler parts.
I do not believe that the ingenuity of our times has succeeded in reconciling the universally adopted belief in the special character of each nation with the no less general conviction that they are all equal.
Yet this contradiction is very flagrant, the more so as its partisans are not behindhand in extolling the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons of North America over all the other nations of the same continent. It is true that they ascribe that superiority to the influence of political inst.i.tutions. But they will hardly contest the characteristic apt.i.tude of the countrymen of Penn and Washington, to establish wherever they go liberal forms of government, and their still more valuable ability to preserve them, when once established. Is not this a very high prerogative allotted to that branch of the human family? the more precious, since so few of the groups that have ever inhabited the globe possessed it.
I know that my opponents will not allow me an easy victory. They will object to me the immense potency of manners and inst.i.tutions; they will show me how much the spirit of the government, by its inherent and irresistible force, influences the development of a nation; how vastly different will be its progress when fostered by liberty or crushed by despotism. This argument, however, by no means invalidates my position.
Political inst.i.tutions can have but two origins: either they emanate from the people which is to be governed by them, or they are the invention of a foreign nation, by whom they are imposed, or from whom they are copied.
In the former case, the inst.i.tutions are necessarily moulded upon the instincts and wants of the people; and if, through carelessness or ignorance, they are in aught incompatible with either, such defects will soon be removed or remedied. In every independent community the law may be said to emanate from the people; for though they have not apparently the power of promulgating it, it cannot be applicable to them unless it is consonant with their views and sentiments: it must be the reflex of the national character.[64] The wise law-giver, to whose superior genius his countrymen seem solely indebted, has but given a voice to the wants and desires of all. The mere theorist, like Draco, finds his code a dead letter, and destined soon to give place to the inst.i.tutions of the more judicious philosopher who would give to his compatriots "not the best laws possible, but such only as they were capable of receiving." When Charles I., guided by the fatal counsels of the Earl of Strafford, attempted to curb the English nation under the yoke of absolutism, king and minister were treading the b.l.o.o.d.y quagmire of theories. But when Ferdinand the Catholic ordered those terrible, but, in the then condition of the nation, politically necessary persecutions of the Spanish Moors, or when Napoleon re-established religion and authority in France, and flattered the military spirit of the nation--both these potentates had rightly understood the genius of their subjects, and were building upon a solid and practical foundation.
False inst.i.tutions, often beautiful on paper, are those which are not conformed to the national virtues _or failings_, and consequently unsuitable to the country, though perhaps perfectly practicable and highly useful in a neighboring state. Such inst.i.tutions, were they borrowed from the legislation of the angels, will produce nothing but discord and anarchy. Others, on the contrary, which the theorist will eschew, and the moralist blame in many points, or perhaps throughout, may be the best adapted to the community. Lycurgus was no theorist; his laws were in strict accordance with the spirit and manners of his countrymen.[65] The Dorians of Sparta were few in number, valiant, and rapacious; false inst.i.tutions would have made them but petty villains--Lycurgus changed them into heroic brigands.[66]
The influence of laws and political inst.i.tutions is certainly very great; they preserve and invigorate the genius of a nation, define its objects, and help to attain them; but though they may develop powers, they cannot create them where they do not already exist. They first receive their imprint from the nation, and then return and confirm it.
In other words, it is the nation that fashions the laws, before the laws, in turn, can fashion the nation. Another proof of this fact are the changes and modifications which they undergo in the course of time.
I have already said above, that in proportion as nations advance in civilization, and extend their territory and power, their ethnical character, and, with it, their instincts, undergo a gradual alteration.
New manners and new tendencies prevail, and soon give rise to a series of modifications, the more frequent and radical as the influx of blood becomes greater and the fusion more complete.
England, where the ethnical changes have been slower and less considerable than in any other European country, preserves to this day the basis of the social system of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The munic.i.p.al organization of the times of the Plantagenets and the Tudors flourishes in almost all its ancient vigor. There is the same partic.i.p.ation of the n.o.bility in the government, and the same manner of composing that n.o.bility; the same respect for ancient families, united to an appreciation of those whose merits raise them above their cla.s.s. Since the accession of James I., and still more since the union, in Queen Anne"s reign, there has indeed been an influx of Scotch and Irish blood; foreign nations have also, though imperceptibly, furnished their contingent to the mixture; alterations have consequently become more frequent of late, but without, as yet, touching the original spirit of the const.i.tution.
In France, the ethnical elements are much more numerous, and their mixtures more varied; and there it has repeatedly happened that the princ.i.p.al power of the state pa.s.sed suddenly from the hands of one race to those of another. Changes, rather than modifications, have therefore taken place in the social and political system; and the changes were abrupt or radical, in proportion as these races were more or less dissimilar. So long as the north of France, where the Germanic element prevailed, preponderated in the policy of the country, the fabric of feudalism, or rather its inform remains, maintained their ground. After the expulsion of the English in the fifteenth century, the provinces of the centre took the lead. Their efforts, under the guidance of Charles VII., had recently restored the national independence, and the Gallo-Roman blood naturally predominated in camp and council. From this time dates the introduction of the taste for military life and foreign conquests, peculiar to the Celtic race, and the tendency to concentrate and consolidate the sovereign authority, which characterized the Roman.
The road being thus prepared, the next step towards the establishment of absolute power was made at the end of the sixteenth century, by the Aquitanian followers of Henry IV., who had still more of the Roman than of the Celtic blood in their veins. The centralization of power, resulting from the ascendency of the southern populations, soon gave Paris an overweening preponderance, and finally made it, what it now is, the sovereign of the state. This great capital, this modern Babel, whose population is a motley compound of all the most varied ethnical elements, no longer had any motive to love or respect any tradition or peculiar tendency, and, coming to a complete rupture with the past, hurried France into a series of political and social experiments of doctrines the most remote from, and repulsive to, the ancient customs and traditional tendencies of the realm.
These examples seem to me sufficient to prove that political inst.i.tutions, when not imposed by foreign influence, take their mould from the national character, not only in the first place, but throughout all subsequent changes. Let us now examine the second case, when a foreign code is, _nolens volens_, forced upon a nation by a superior power.
There are few instances of such attempts. Indeed, they were never made on a grand scale, by any truly sagacious governments of either ancient or modern times. The Romans were too politic to indulge in such hazardous experiments. Alexander, before them, had never ventured it, and his successors, convinced, either by reason or instinct, of the futility of such efforts, had been contented to reign, like the conqueror of Darius, over a vast mosaic of nations, each of which retained its own habits, manners, laws, and administrative forms, and, at least so long as it preserved its ethnical ident.i.ty, resembled its fellow-subjects in nothing but submission to the same fiscal and military regulations.
There were, it is true, among the nations subdued by the Romans, some whose codes contained practices so utterly repugnant to their masters, that the latter could not possibly have tolerated them. Such were the human sacrifices of the Druids, which were, indeed, visited with the severest penalties. But the Romans, with all their power, never succeeded in completely extirpating this barbarous rite. In the Narbonnese, the victory was easy, for the Gallic population had been almost completely replaced by Roman colonists; but the more intact tribes of the interior provinces made an obstinate resistance; and, in the peninsula of Brittany, where, in the fourth century, a British colony re-imported the ancient instincts with the ancient blood, the population, in spite of the Romans, continued, either from patriotism or veneration for their ancient traditions, to butcher fellow-beings on their altars, as often as they could elude the vigilance of their masters. All revolts began with the restoration of this fearful feature of the national creed, and even Christianity could not entirely efface its traces, until after protracted and strenuous efforts. As late as the seventeenth century, the shipwrecked were murdered, and wrecks plundered in all the maritime provinces where the Kimric blood had preserved itself unmixed. These barbarous customs were in accordance with the manners of a race which, not being yet sufficiently admixed, still remained true to its irrepressible instincts.
One characteristic of European civilization is its intolerance.
Conscious of its pre-eminence, we are p.r.o.ne to deny the existence of any other, or, at least, to consider it as the standard of all. We look with supreme contempt upon all nations that are not within its pale, and when they fall under our influence, we attempt to convert them to our views and modes of thinking. Inst.i.tutions which we know to be good and useful, but which persuasion fails to propagate among nations to whose instincts they are foreign, we force upon them by the power of our arms. Where are the results? Since the sixteenth century, when the European spirit of discovery and conquest penetrated to the east, it does not seem to have operated the slightest change in the manners and mode of existence of the populations which it subjected.
I have already adduced the example of British India. All the other European possessions present the same spectacle. The aborigines of Java, though completely subjugated by the Dutch, have not yet made the first step towards embracing the manners of their conquerors. Java, at this day, preserves the social regulations of the time of its independence.
In South America, where Spain ruled with unrestrained power for centuries, what effect has it produced? The ancient empires, it is true, are no longer; their traces, even, are almost obliterated. But while the native has not risen to the level of his conqueror, the latter has been degraded by the mixture of blood.[67] In the North, a different method has been pursued, but with results equally negative; nay, in the eyes of philanthropy, more deplorable; for, while the Spanish Indians have at least increased in numbers,[68] and even mixed with their masters, to the Red-Man of the North, the contact with the Anglo-Saxon race has been death. The feeble remnants of these wretched tribes are fast disappearing, and disappearing as uncivilized, as uncivilizable, as their ancestors. In Oceanica, the same observation holds good. The number of aborigines is daily diminishing. The European may disarm them, and prevent them from doing him injury, but change them he cannot.
Where-ever he is master, they no longer eat one another, but they fill themselves with firewater, and this novel species of brutishness is all they learn of European civilization.
There are, indeed, two governments framed by nations of a different race, after our models: that of the Sandwich Islands, and that of St.
Domingo. A glance at these two countries will complete the proof of the futility of any attempts to give to a nation inst.i.tutions not suggested by its own genius.
In the Sandwich Islands, the representative system shines with full l.u.s.tre. We there find an Upper House, a Lower House, a ministry who govern, and a king who reigns; nothing is wanted. Yet all this is mere decoration; the wheel-work that moves the whole machine, the indispensable motive power, is the corps of missionaries. To them alone belongs the honor of finding the ideas, of presenting them, and carrying them through, either by their personal influence over their neophytes, or, if need be, by threats. It may be doubted, however, whether the missionaries, if they had no other instruments but the king and chambers, would not, after struggling for a while against the inapt.i.tude of their pupils, find themselves compelled to take a more direct, and, consequently, more apparent part in the management of affairs. This difficulty is obviated by the establishment of a ministry composed of Europeans, or half-bloods. Between them and the missionaries, all public affairs are prearranged; the rest is only for show. King Kamehameha III.
is, it seems, a man of ability. For his own account, he has abandoned tattooing, and although he has not yet succeeded in dissuading all his courtiers from this agreeable practice, he enjoys the satisfaction of seeing their countenances adorned with comparatively slight designs. The ma.s.s of the nation, the country n.o.bility and common people, persist upon this as all other points, in the ancient ideas and customs.[69] Still, a variety of causes tend to daily increase the European population of the Isles. The proximity of California makes them a point of great interest to the far-seeing energy of our nations. Runaway sailors, and mutineers, are no longer the only white colonists; merchants, speculators, adventurers of all sorts, collect there in considerable numbers, build houses, and become permanent settlers. The native population is gradually becoming absorbed in the mixture with the whites. It is highly probable that, ere long, the present representative form of government will be superseded by an administration composed of delegates from one or all of the great maritime powers.
Of one thing I feel firmly convinced, that these imported inst.i.tutions will take firm root in the country, but the day of their final triumph, by a necessary synchronism, will be that of the extinction of the native race.