amiable. To disturb these pleasant prospects of the augmenting happiness of the superior races, Mr. Pearson brings to the front the Chinese, the Negroes, the Indians of the tropical parts of America, and the natives of British India. His primary argument is, that the yellow and black races are bound to multiply and advance, and so to squeeze into narrower quarters the hitherto dominant races of the temperate zone.

The first and gravest danger with which Europe is threatened is from the expansion of China. Mr. Pearson, a distinguished Oxford student, has been minister of education in Victoria, and he looks back with keen satisfaction upon the policy adopted by the Australians towards the Chinese. What the yellow race is capable of doing was seen and tested in Australia. China has a multitudinous population, trained

reason, enlightenment, and progress. | ganization which is already passing Those imaginative spirits who are most away, and will bring with it general excited by the movements of our time well-being, and oblige every one to be have been dreaming of universal peace and happiness. In epochs of change, forecasts of the future have not been uncommon, and prophecies of evil have always added a growling accompaniment to the hopeful forecasts. There are plenty of disaffected persons in these days who rather enjoy telling us that we are going to the bad; who look with disgust on triumphant democracy, and are sure that we are in the way to lose refinement and religion, if not on the eve of a period of robbery and rioting. But these Cassandra warnings do not aim at being scientific; they are rather expressions of displeasure at the turn things are taking than attempts to conceive the actual condition of the world during the coming generations. It is impossible to take part in making changes, or to rejoice in their being made, without believing that mankind will on the whole and in the long run be the better for them. The youthful to habits of industry, habituated to and poetical, who dip into the future far as human eye can see, have always had visions of a better and happier as well as more wonderful world. Just now, philanthropy, which pervades all classes, and socialism, which is the creed of those who are most zealous in promoting social change, are looking forward to a millennium of general comfort and international harmony. Attempts have been made to give realistic representations of the socialist world of the future, in which life is to be made easy and happy for all by a skilful reconciliation of interests. Through no such revolution, but as a gradual result of evolution, a satisfactory future has been anticipated by philosophers also. Mr. J. S. Mill gave economic reasons for expecting a stationary condition of society, in which a quiet and general pursuit of things really desirable may take the place of eager competition and the increasing of wealth. Mr. Herbert Spencer convinces himself that, by the continued action of existing causes, an industrial organization of society will completely supersede the military or

privation and hardships, of singular toughness in body and spirit, ready to emigrate to any land to which they are attracted by a hope of bettering themselves. Mr. Pearson's auguries with regard to the future development of China have been to some extent anticipated by other observers, who have predicted that both Russia and the British Empire may find in that power a formidable rival on their Oriental frontiers. I have come across a physiological forecast, which goes beyond Mr. Pearson's, in a paper by Mr. S. S. Buckman on "Some Laws of Heredity, and their Application to Man," read before the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club, and published in their "Proceedings," vol. x., part iii. :

In time

a distant time truly, but none the European, the quickthe less certain developing race, will disappear altogether.

Medical science and philanthropy, though admirable for the individual, abso

lutely necessary for a high degree of civilization, and indispensable for the evolution of scientific thought, are decidedly detri mental to the race. They keep alive and

allow to multiply just those weakly mem- | throughout Asia, from England and Gerbers who would be so surely and summarily many (pp. 125, 126).

weeded out by that rough-and-ready process This is the check with which England known as Natural Selection. In the dis- is most immediately threatened tant future, when that over-population deadly competition in the Eastern which they do so much to cherish (teste markets. And Mr. Pearson makes the India at the present day) precipitates a gen- shrewd observation, that "the Chinese uine struggle for existence, the races in which natural selection has been checked would be less dangerous than they are the most will assuredly go to the wall. A if they were as warlike as the Turks in race in which a high level of physical vital- the sixteenth and seventeenth centuity is maintained by a constant struggle for ries, because in that case they would existence under arduous but healthy condi- waste their reproductive forces in tions, a race able to subsist on a sparing arms "" (p. 96). "Every year seems quantity of food from the same cause, a to increase the pre-eminence of indusrace unaffected by so-called civilization, trial over essentially martial nations" and a race sufficiently prolific withal, is the (p. 95). But he believes that China one which is destined to occupy the place will soon become formidable as a miliof the Europeans. Strange as it may seem, the Chinese appear to be fitted for the tary power: work (pp. 315, 316).

Mr. Pearson takes shorter views, and does not look forward so far as to the extinction of the European race, but is content to threaten it with decline and torpor. He sees other inferior races advancing with minatory strides, the lower civilization showing more vigor than the higher; but it is with China that we have to reckon first:

Neither does it seem possible to imag not some day be organized and rendered ine that the great inert force of China will mobile and capable of military aggression.

...

We have compelled her to come into the fellowship of nations. She has adopted steamers, and European artillery and army organization; she has accepted the telegraph; she is about to introduce railways; and she has credit enough to carry out the changes she needs with foreign capital. On three sides of her lie countries that she may easily seize, over which very often she has some old claim, and in the climate of which her people can live. Flexible as Jews, they can thrive on the mountain plateaux of Thibet and under the sun of Singapore; more versatile even than Jews, they are excellent laborers, and not without merit as soldiers and sailors; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of the East possesses. They do not need even the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnificent future. Ordinary statesmanship, adopting the improvements of Europe without offending the customs and prejudices of the people, may make them a State which no Power in Europe will dare to disregard; with an army which can march by fixed stages across Asia; and a fleet which could hold its own against any the strongest of European Powers could afford to keep permanently in Chinese waters (pp. 111, 112).

No one in California or Australia, where the effects of Chinese competition have been studied, has, I believe, the smallest doubt that Chinese laborers, if allowed to come in freely, could starve all the white men in either country out of it, or force them to submit to harder work and a much lower standard of wages. In Victoria, a single trade, that of furniture-making, was taken possession of and ruined for white men, within the space of something like five years. Only two large employers excluded Chinamen altogether; and white men, where they were retained, were kept on only to supply a limited demand for the best kind of work. Now, what Chinamen can do in Melbourne . . Chinamen at home could do incomparably better, if they worked in establishments fitted up with the best machinery and were directed by foremen knowing the European taste. Does any one doubt that the day is at hand when China will have cheap fuel from her coalThe reader sees with what verve our mines, cheap transport by railways and author argues his case. One of his steamers, and will have founded technical schools to develop her industries? When-chief points is, that emigration has of ever that day comes, she may wrest the late years done much to promote the control of the world's markets, especially prosperity of the European, and espe

2

cially of the British races, by providing | nine, twice seven are fourteen, so-and-so will do so-and-so; in this manner will the business surely take effect. But our Lord God says unto them, For whom, then, do For a cypher? Do I sit here ye hold me. above in vain and to no purpose? You shall know that I will twist your accounts about finely, and make them all false reckonings (Table-Talk, Bohn's edition, p. 310).

We know that colored and white labor cannot exist side by side; we are well aware that China can swamp us with a single year's surplus of population; and we know that if national existence is sacrificed to the working of a few mines and sugar plantations, it is not the Englishman alone, but the whole civilized world that will be the losers. We are guarding the last part of the world, in which the higher races can live and increase freely, for the higher civilization (p. 16).

a vent for their growing numbers, and for their more eager and enterprising spirits; and that soon there will be no vacant part of the globe which these more civilized races can occupy. The black and yellow races are filling up the hotter parts of the globe with their much-enduring populations. Mr. Pearson speaks with pride and warmth as Whatever Mr. Pearson's private conan Australian colonist who has "re-victions may be, in developing "the sided twenty years under the Southern argument of this book," he certainly Cross takes the line of treating our Lord God as a cypher. He looks only at the facts and processes of the present time, and from these he deduces what, according to judicious reasoning, enlightened by the experience of the past, may be expected to be their results in the proximate future. Those of his readers who would decline to meet him on this ground of rational calculation, he on his part would decline to meet at all. There is no sign of his having any general theory or set of opinions which he wishes to make interesting and attractive. The most instructive part of the book-though every page is crowded with knowledge is that in which the author dwells on the religious and social and intellectual tendencies of the English world of our time. But as he makes this onward aggressive march of the yellow and black races, and the consequent repression of the Aryan races, the basis of his argument, this is the consideration which first challenges the attention of the reader.

But this one outlet will not serve us long. The European nations, according to our author's view, will undergo industrial compression. They will be shut up within their own territories, with shrinking trade, and with the necessity of retaining and supporting their entire populations. State Socialism in all its forms will of necessity be developed, the increase of population will be restrained, and each nation will be compelled to arm itself to the teeth, not from any love of war, but for selfdefence, and as the condition of preserving its national existence. That is the political and economic condition which will be forced upon the nations of Europe by this one definite cause

the certain and closely approaching expansion of the inferior races of the world.

Those who have any belief in "a Hand that guides" would be inclined to set their faith defiantly against all such calculations. That faith was once expressed with characteristic and refreshing vigor by Luther:

Potentates and princes nowadays [we should say statists and philosophers] set to work calculating three times three make

As regards a Christian faith in our Lord God," we are not entitled to hold that it may not be in the designs of Divine Providence that races which have done their work should give way to other races, through which the development of mankind in general should be advanced. We must go farther, and admit that, if this terrestrial globe is destined to lose its power of sustaining life, and the sun itself is gradually parting with its heat, we have to face the remote contingency of the extinction of the whole human race. We are bound to be cautious about dictating to our But Lord God as well as ignoring him. on his own ground we may find reason

for keeping our author's conclusion at self, and will influence the procedure

bay. What has been the most conspicu- of conquerors in southern Asia, in ous feature of all past human history? Africa, and in South America " (p. 82). Confessedly, war. Mr. Pearson notes It is not in the least reasonable, I subthe fact that the Chinese race is not mit, to expect that " massacres which constitutionally warlike, as the Turks Gustavus Adolphus, Cromwell, or Tuwere. He also refers to the growing renne would have looked upon as the distaste of modern Europeans, and regrettable but necessary consequences especially of the English, for violent of war" (p. 83), should not occur in proceedings, and to the shortness and the procedure of Chinese or Negro comparative humanity of recent wars. conquerors unrestrained by any inBut he takes for granted that the Chi- fluence of European powers; the develnese will create formidable armies, and opment of strength and ambition and he believes that the nations of Europe military effectiveness in half-civilized will be compelled to become more mili- races cannot fail to be accompanied by tary than they are now. He is not the wars of the old kind, such as will break dreamer dwelling on the happy time up dominions and keep down the inwhen the battle-flags shall be furled, in crease of populations. As regards the Parliament of man, the Federation immediate prospects in Europe, there of the world. From his point of view, are many who see in the large scale of what is more probable than that war the existing armaments of the nations will reign in the future as it has reigned a most dangerous incitement to war, in the past-war with a thousand bat- and who therefore long to persuade the tles, and shaking a hundred thrones ? powers to reduce simultaneously their It is true that the imperial sceptre of military strength: Mr. Pearson eviGreat Britain forbids fighting in India dently holds, and I think more wisely, and South Africa, and is likely to do so not only that any attempts to arrange increasingly in Central and Northern simultaneous disarmament would be Africa, and that under the Pax Britan- | futile, but that if France or Russia, nica the protected races multiply with Germany or Austria, were seriously to inconvenient rapidity. But is it possi- diminish its preparations for war, war ble that great powers should be built would be the more likely to break out. up out of the inferior races without It can hardly be doubted that a temptdesolating wars? All experience con- ing opportunity would be too much for futes such a forecast. Mr. Pearson the self-restraint of almost any of the himself supplies evidence against it: Continental powers; and the shock of "India left to itself might be rent for a modern war between great nations, time by the war of Mussulman and though it may be brief, is terrific and Hindoo; but India is too populous for highly destructive. The fact that our any large part of its people to be ex- author has omitted to take account of terminated, unless indeed wars were the chances of wars of wars which waged in the Chinese fashion" (p. 34). would excite mankind, and change govWithin our own time, the Tae-ping war ernments, and sweep away millions of cost China many millions of people, men seems to me sufficient of itself and was at last brought to an end by to weaken the verisimilitude of his British aid. A Mohammedan rebellion forecast. But that the statesmen of was stamped out by Chinese troops in Russia and of England are bound to Yunnan and Ili, after wars in which keep their eyes upon China with a cermillions of lives were destroyed (p. tain anxiety, and that this is one of the 132). Mr. Pearson says: "Although many reasons for looking to the security it would not be wise to calculate that of our imperial system, and for refusthere will be no revival of the old saving to abandon ourselves to sentimental agery, it is reasonable to expect that dreams, Mr. Pearson's readers the accepted practice of civilized na- probably be more convinced than they tions will, on the whole, maintain it- were before.

will

T

Having satisfied himself that within a century or two the Chinese, the Negroes, and the native populations of British India and Central America, will be driving back the European races and penning them within the lands of the temperate zone, it was natural that our author should go on to consider how the civilized nations, and the English in particular, would meet this new condition. We are thus led to a general survey of the tendencies now to be discerned in the habits and activities of the English race. To Mr. Pearson's eyes, all things are moving in the same direction towards more general and equally diffused comfort, and towards flatness, dulness, vacuity. It seems to ical ease which our author expects to me very questionable whether the physprevail is likely to be secured in conjunction with the other conditions which he supposes. He believes that State Socialism will make progress; that the whole population, acting through the State as its effective organ, will have its mind set on providing for itself the necessaries of life in sufficient abundance; and that it will succeed in its aim. This is perhaps a little too like the views of the sanguine State Socialists, who take for granted that the State, being all-powerful, can do what it pleases in the sphere of economics, and make every one comfortable. If England were to lose its trade and be shut in upon itself, it would have some hard times to go through in adjusting itself to these new circumstances. And an army maintained by conscription at a strength which would make it a match for any invaders, and kept in the highest state of military efficiency, would heavily tax the resources of the country. Can it be considered probable that these things would result in an eternal calm" settling upon the land? | leading man, that 66 The physical comfort of Mr. Pearson's ton, and Warren forecast may be to many a welcome set-off against the dismal colors of the rest of his picture. But some of us would as lief, perhaps, see our country perishing in final convulsions, as descending towards a permanent level of well-fed animal life.

Again and again I find the suspicion recurring that our author is not expressing his whole mind in this book. The general thesis which he develops is this - that all the changes of recent years are not only inevitable, but good and desirable, and that they all tend to degeneracy and decay. Over a wide range of subjects, with a rare wealth of illustration, and with pertinacious analysis, he sets himself to demonstrate this tendency. As it was impossible that any one could be so wise as Lord Thurlow looked, so we may say it is impossible for any serious thinkermuch more for a man who has been a minister of education to be so coldly cynical as Mr. Pearson might seem to be. To prophesy evils which cannot be guarded against, and to show that these are the results of good motives and right actions, with no purpose but to make the doers unhappy, seems too dismal a task for any one but an impossible cynic to undertake. And there are jets of heat to be felt in an occasional fiery phrase like this, "If the people of Athens had not been quickened by the inspiration of empire, if they had stooped to count heads or ships

which issue from no merely cynical nature. It is true, however, that the telling phrases which catch the reader's attention are apt to have a touch of cynicism about them. Their epigrammatic irony strikes one the more from their occurring in the course of an almost careless, though vigorous and scholarly, style of writing. The following are casual examples : Charity occasionally blesses him that gives, and habitually demoralizes him who takes" (p. 206); "human nature has always shown itself impatient of conjugal restraints" (p. 236); such is the absolute decorum demanded in our day from a Nelson, WellingHastings would

66

scarcely be permitted now to save the Empire" (p. 202). But "the argument of this book" is the matter to which the author would probably request the reader to confine his attention; and about the bearing of this there is no uncertainty.