RACIAL INEQUALITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF INSTITUTIONS
The idea of an original, clear-cut, and permanent inequality among the
different races is one of the oldest and most widely held opinions in
the world. We need not be surprised at this, when we consider the
isolation of primitive tribes and communities, and how in the early ages
they all used to “retire into their shell”; a great number have never
left this stage. Except in quite modern times, this idea has been the
basis of nearly all theories of government. Every people, great or
small, has begun by making inequality its chief political motto. This is
the origin of all systems of caste, of nobility, and of aristocracy, in
so far as the last is founded on the right of birth. The law of
primogeniture, which assumes the pre-eminence of the first born and his
descendants, is merely a corollary of the same principle. With it go the
repulsion felt for the foreigner and the superiority which every nation
claims for itself with regard to its neighbours. As soon as the isolated
groups have begun to intermingle and to become one people, they grow
great and civilized, and look at each other in a more favourable light,
as one finds the other useful. Then, and only then, do we see the
absolute principle of the inequality, and hence the mutual hostility, of
races questioned and undermined. Finally, when the majority of the
citizens have mixed blood flowing in their veins, they erect into a
universal and absolute truth what is only true for themselves, and feel
it to be their duty to assert that all men are equal. They are also
moved by praiseworthy dislike of oppression, a legitimate hatred towards
the abuse of power; to all thinking men these cast an ugly shadow on the
memory of races which have once been dominant, and which have never
failed (for such is the way of the world) to justify to some extent many
of the charges that have been brought against them. From mere
declamation against tyranny, men go on to deny the natural causes of the
superiority against which they are declaiming. The tyrant’s power is, to
them, not only misused, but usurped. They refuse, quite wrongly, to
admit that certain qualities are by a fatal necessity the exclusive
inheritance of such and such a stock. In fact, the more heterogeneous
the elements of which a people is composed, the more complacently does
it assert that the most different powers are, or can be, possessed in
the same measure by every fraction of the human race, without exception.
This theory is barely applicable to these hybrid philosophers
themselves; but they extend it to cover all the generations which were,
are, and ever shall be on the earth. They end one day by summing up
their views in the words which, like the bag of Æolus, contain so many
storms—“All men are brothers.”[15]
This is the political axiom. Would you like to hear it in its scientific
form? “All men,” say the defenders of human equality, “are furnished
with similar intellectual powers, of the same nature, of the same value,
of the same compass.” These are not perhaps their exact words, but they
certainly give the right meaning. So the brain of the Huron Indian
contains in an undeveloped form an intellect which is absolutely the
same as that of the Englishman or the Frenchman! Why then, in the course
of the ages, has he not invented printing or steam-power? I should be
quite justified in asking our Huron why, if he is equal to our European
peoples, his tribe has never produced a Cæsar or a Charlemagne among its
warriors, and why his bards and sorcerers have, in some inexplicable
way, neglected to become Homers and Galens. The difficulty is usually
met by the blessed phrase, “the predominating influence of environment.”
According to this doctrine, an island will not see the same miracles of
civilization as a continent, the same people will be different in the
north from what it is in the south, forests will not allow of
developments which are favoured by open country. What else? the humidity
of a marsh, I suppose, will produce a civilization which would
inevitably have been stifled by the dryness of the Sahara! However
ingenious these little hypotheses may be, the testimony of fact is
against them. In spite of wind and rain, cold and heat, sterility and
fruitfulness, the world has seen barbarism and civilization flourishing
everywhere, one after the other, on the same soil. The brutish fellah is
tanned by the same sun as scorched the powerful priest of Memphis; the
learned professor of Berlin lectures under the same inclement sky that
once beheld the wretched existence of the Finnish savage.
The curious point is that the theory of equality, which is held by the
majority of men and so has permeated our customs and institutions, has
not been powerful enough to overthrow the evidence against it; and those
who are most convinced of its truth pay homage every day to its
opposite. No one at any time refuses to admit that there are great
differences between nations, and the ordinary speech of men, with a
naïve inconsistency, confesses the fact. In this it is merely imitating
the practice of other ages which were not less convinced than we are—and
for the same reason—of the absolute equality of races.
While clinging to the liberal dogma of human brotherhood, every nation
has always managed to add to the names of others certain qualifications
and epithets that suggest their unlikeness from itself. The Roman of
Italy called the Græco-Roman a _Græculus_, or “little Greek,” and gave
him the monopoly of cowardice and empty chatter. He ridiculed the
Carthaginian settler, and pretended to be able to pick him out among a
thousand for his litigious character and his want of faith. The
Alexandrians were held to be witty, insolent, and seditious. In the
Middle Ages, the Anglo-Norman kings accused their French subjects of
lightness and inconstancy. To-day, every one talks of the “national
characteristics” of the German, the Spaniard, the Englishman, and the
Russian. I am not asking whether the judgments are true or not. My sole
point is that they exist, and are adopted in ordinary speech. Thus, if
on the one hand human societies are called equal, and on the other we
find some of them frivolous, others serious; some avaricious, others
thriftless; some passionately fond of fighting, others careful of their
lives and energies;—it stands to reason that these differing nations
must have destinies which are also absolutely different, and, in a word,
unequal. The stronger will play the parts of kings and rulers in the
tragedy of the world. The weaker will be content with a more humble
position.
I do not think that the usual idea of a national character for each
people has yet been reconciled with the belief, which is just as widely
held, that all peoples are equal. Yet the contradiction is striking and
flagrant, and all the more serious because the most ardent democrats are
the first to claim superiority for the Anglo-Saxons of North America
over all the nations of the same continent. It is true that they ascribe
the high position of their favourites merely to their political
constitution. But, so far as I know, they do not deny that the
countrymen of Penn and Washington, are, as a nation, peculiarly prone to
set up liberal institutions in all their places of settlement, and, what
is more, to keep them going. Is not this very tenacity a wonderful
characteristic of this branch of the human race, and the more precious
because most of the societies which have existed, or still exist, in the
world seem to be without it?
I do not flatter myself that I shall be able to enjoy this inconsistency
without opposition. The friends of equality will no doubt talk very
loudly, at this point, about “the power of customs and institutions.”
They will tell me once more how powerfully the health and growth of a
nation are influenced by “the essential quality of a government, taken
by itself,” or “the fact of despotism or liberty.” But it is just at
this point that I too shall oppose their arguments.
Political institutions have only two possible sources. They either come
directly from the nation which has to live under them, or they are
invented by a powerful people and imposed on all the States that fall
within its sphere of influence.
There is no difficulty in the first hypothesis. A people obviously
adapts its institutions to its wants and instincts; and will beware of
laying down any rule which may thwart the one or the other. If, by some
lack of skill or care, such a rule is laid down, the consequent feeling
of discomfort leads the people to amend its laws, and put them into more
perfect harmony with their express objects. In every autonomous State,
the laws, we may say, always emanate from the people; not generally
because it has a direct power of making them, but because, in order to
be good laws, they must be based upon the people’s point of view, and be
such as it might have thought out for itself, if it had been better
informed. If some wise law-giver seems, at first sight, the sole source
of some piece of legislation, a nearer view will show that his very
wisdom has led him merely to give out the oracles that have been
dictated by his nation. If he is a judicious man, like Lycurgus, he will
prescribe nothing that the Dorian of Sparta could not accept. If he is a
mere doctrinaire, like Draco, he will draw up a code that will soon be
amended or repealed by the Ionian of Athens, who, like all the children
of Adam, is incapable of living for long under laws that are foreign to
the natural tendencies of his real self. The entrance of a man of genius
into this great business of law-making is merely a special manifestation
of the enlightened will of the people; if the laws simply fulfilled the
fantastic dreams of one individual, they could not rule any people for
long. We cannot admit that the institutions thus invented and moulded by
a race of men make that race what it is. They are effects, not causes.
Their influence is, of course, very great; they preserve the special
genius of the nation, they mark out the road on which it is to travel,
the end at which it must aim. To a certain extent, they are the hothouse
where its instincts develop, the armoury that furnishes its best weapons
for action. But they do not create their creator; and though they may be
a powerful element in his success by helping on the growth of his innate
qualities, they will fail miserably whenever they attempt to alter
these, or to extend them beyond their natural limits. In a word, they
cannot achieve the impossible.
Ill-fitting institutions, however, together with their consequences,
have played a great part in the world. When Charles I, by the evil
counsels of the Earl of Strafford, wished to force absolute monarchy on
the English, the King and his minister were walking on the blood-stained
morass of political theory. When the Calvinists dreamed of bringing the
French under a government that was at once aristocratic and republican,
they were just as far away from the right road.
When the Regent[16] tried to join hands with the nobles who were
conquered in 1652, and to carry on the government by intrigue, as the
co-adjutor and his friends had desired,[17] her efforts pleased nobody,
and offended equally the nobility, the clergy, the Parliament, and the
Third Estate. Only a few tax-farmers were pleased. But when Ferdinand
the Catholic promulgated against the Moors of Spain his terrible, though
necessary, measures of destruction; when Napoleon re-established
religion in France, flattered the military spirit, and organized his
power in such a way as to protect his subjects while coercing them, both
these sovereigns, having studied and understood the special character of
their people, were building their house upon a rock. In fact, bad
institutions are those which, however well they look on paper, are not
in harmony with the national qualities or caprices, and so do not suit a
particular State, though they might be very successful in the
neighbouring country. They would bring only anarchy and disorder, even
if they were taken from the statute-book of the angels. On the contrary,
other institutions are good for the opposite reason, though they might
be condemned, from a particular point of view or even absolutely, by the
political philosopher or the moralist. The Spartans were small in
number, of high courage, ambitious, and violent. Ill-fitting laws might
have turned them into a mere set of pettifogging knaves; Lycurgus made
them a nation of heroic brigands.
There is no doubt about it. As the people is born before the laws, the
laws take after the people; and receive from it the stamp which they are
afterwards to impress in their turn. The changes made in institutions by
the lapse of time are a great proof of what I say.
I have already mentioned that as nations become greater, more powerful,
and more civilized, their blood loses its purity and their instincts are
gradually altered. As a result, it becomes impossible for them to live
happily under the laws that suited their ancestors. New generations have
new customs and tendencies, and profound changes in the institutions are
not slow to follow. These are more frequent and far-reaching in
proportion as the race itself is changed; while they are rarer, and more
gradual, so long as the people is more nearly akin to the first founders
of the State. In England, where modifications of the stock have been
slower and, up to now, less varied than in any other European country,
we still see the institutions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
forming the base of the social structure. We find there, almost in its
first vigour, the communal organization of the Plantagenets and the
Tudors, the same method of giving the nobility a share in the
government, the same gradations of rank in this nobility, the same
respect for old families tempered with the same love of low-born merit.
Since James I, however, and especially since the Union under Queen Anne,
the English blood has been more and more prone to mingle with that of
the Scotch and Irish, while other nations have also helped, by
imperceptible degrees, to modify its purity. The result is that
innovations have been more frequent in our time than ever before, though
they have always remained fairly faithful to the spirit of the original
constitution.
In France, intermixture of race has been far more common and varied. In
some cases, by a sudden turn of the wheel, power has even passed from
one race to another. Further, on the social side, there have been
complete changes rather than modifications, and these were more or less
far-reaching, as the groups that successively held the chief power were
more or less different. While the north of France was the preponderating
element in national politics, feudalism—or rather a degenerate parody of
feudalism—maintained itself with fair success; and the municipal spirit
followed its fortunes. After the expulsion of the English, in the
fifteenth century, and the restoration of national independence under
Charles VII, the central provinces, which had taken the chief part in
this revolution and were far less Germanic in race than the districts
beyond the Loire, naturally saw their Gallo-Roman blood predominant in
the camp and the council-chamber. They combined the taste for military
life and foreign conquest—the heritage of the Celtic race—with the love
of authority that was innate in their Roman blood; and they turned the
current of national feeling in this direction. During the sixteenth
century they largely prepared the ground on which, in 1599, the
Aquitanian supporters of Henry IV, less Celtic though still more Roman
than themselves, laid the foundation stone of another and greater
edifice of absolute power. When Paris, whose population is certainly a
museum of the most varied ethnological specimens, had finally gained
dominion over the rest of France owing to the centralizing policy
favoured by the Southern character, it had no longer any reason to love,
respect, or understand any particular tendency or tradition. This great
capital, this Tower of Babel, broke with the past—the past of Flanders,
Poitou, and Languedoc—and dragged the whole of France into ceaseless
experiments with doctrines that were quite out of harmony with its
ancient customs.
We cannot therefore admit that institutions make peoples what they are
in cases where the peoples themselves have invented the institutions.
But may we say the same of the second hypothesis, which deals with cases
where a nation receives its code from the hands of foreigners powerful
enough to enforce their will, whether the people like it or not?
There are a few cases of such attempts; but I confess I cannot find any
which have been carried out on a great scale by governments of real
political genius in ancient or modern times. Their wisdom has never been
used to change the actual foundations of any great national system. The
Romans were too clever to try such dangerous experiments. Alexander the
Great had never done so; and the successors of Augustus, like the
conqueror of Darius, were content to rule over a vast mosaic of nations,
all of which clung to their own customs, habits, laws, and methods of
government. So long as they and their fellow-subjects remained racially
the same, they were controlled by their rulers only in matters of
taxation and military defence.
There is, however, one point that must not be passed over. Many of the
peoples subdued by the Romans had certain features in their codes so
outrageous that their existence could not be tolerated by Roman
sentiment; for example, the human sacrifices of the Druids, which were
visited with the severest penalties. Well, the Romans, for all their
power, never succeeded in completely stamping out these barbarous rites.
In Narbonese Gaul the victory was easy, as the native population had
been almost entirely replaced by Roman colonists. But in the centre,
where the tribes were wilder, the resistance was more obstinate; and in
the Breton Peninsula, where settlers from England in the fourth century
brought back the ancient customs with the ancient blood, the people
continued, from mere feelings of patriotism and love of tradition, to
cut men’s throats on their altars as often as they dared. The strictest
supervision did not succeed in taking the sacred knife and torch out of
their hands. Every revolt began by restoring this terrible feature of
the national cult; and Christianity, still panting with rage after its
victory over an immoral polytheism, hurled itself with shuddering horror
against the still more hideous superstitions of the Armorici. It
destroyed them only after a long struggle; for as late as the
seventeenth century shipwrecked sailors were massacred and wrecks
plundered in all the parishes on the seaboard where the Cymric blood had
kept its purity. These barbarous customs were in accordance with the
irresistible instincts of a race which had not yet become sufficiently
mixed, and so had seen no reason to change its ways.
It is, however, in modern times especially that we find examples of
institutions imposed by a conqueror and not accepted by his subjects.
Intolerance is one of the chief notes of European civilization.
Conscious of its own power and greatness, it finds itself confronted
either by different civilizations or by peoples in a state of barbarism.
It treats both kinds with equal contempt; and as it sees obstacles to
its own progress in everything that is different from itself, it is apt
to demand a complete change in its subjects’ point of view. The
Spaniards, however, the English, the Dutch, and even the French, did not
venture to push their innovating tendencies too far, when the conquered
peoples were at all considerable in number. In this they copied the
moderation that was forced on the conquerors of antiquity. The East, and
North and West Africa, show clear proof that the most enlightened
nations cannot set up institutions unsuited to the character of their
subjects. I have already mentioned that British India lives its ancient
life, under its own immemorial laws. The Javanese have lost all
political independence, but are very far from accepting any institutions
like those of the Netherlands. They continue to live bound as they lived
free; and since the sixteenth century, when Europe first turned her face
towards the East, we cannot find the least trace of any moral influence
exerted by her, even in the case of the peoples she has most completely
conquered.
Not all these, however, have been so numerous as to force self-control
on their European masters. In some cases the persuasive tongue has been
backed by the stern argument of the sword. The order has gone forth to
abolish existing customs, and put in their place others which the
masters knew to be good and useful. Has the attempt ever succeeded?
America provides us with the richest field for gathering answers to this
question. In the South, the Spaniards reigned without check, and to what
end? They uprooted the ancient empires, but brought no light. They
founded no race like themselves.
In the North the methods were different, but the results just as
negative. In fact, they have been still more unfruitful, still more
disastrous from the point of view of humanity. The Spanish Indians, are,
at any rate, extremely prolific,[18] and have even transformed the blood
of their conquerors, who have now dropped to their level. But the
Redskins of the United States have withered at the touch of the
Anglo-Saxon energy. The few who remain are growing less every day; and
those few are as uncivilized, and as incapable of civilization, as their
forefathers.
In Oceania, the facts point to the same conclusions; the natives are
dying out everywhere. We sometimes manage to take away their arms, and
prevent them from doing harm; but we do not change their nature.
Wherever the European rules, they drink brandy instead of eating each
other. This is the only new custom which our active minds have been
quite successful in imposing; it does not mark a great step in advance.
There are in the world two Governments formed on European models by
peoples different from us in race; one in the Sandwich Islands, the
other at San Domingo. A short sketch of these two Governments will be
enough to show the impotence of all attempts to set up institutions
which are not suggested by the national character.
In the Sandwich Islands the representative system is to be seen in all
its majesty. There is a House of Lords, a House of Commons, an executive
Ministry, a reigning King; nothing is wanting. But all this is mere
ornament. The real motive power that keeps the machine going is a body
of Protestant missionaries. Without them, King, Lords, and Commons would
not know which way to turn, and would soon cease to turn at all. To the
missionaries alone belongs the credit of furnishing the ideas, of
putting them into a palatable form, and imposing them on the people;
they do this either by the influence they exert on their neophytes, or,
in the last resort, by threats. Even so, I rather think that if the
missionaries had nothing but King and Parliament to work with, they
might struggle for a time with the stupidity of their scholars, but
would be forced in the end to take themselves a large and prominent part
in the management of affairs. This would show their hand too obviously;
and so they avoid it by appointing a ministry that consists simply of
men of European race. The whole business is thus a matter of agreement
between the Protestant mission and its nominees; the rest is merely for
show.
As to the King, Kamehameha III, he appears to be a prince of
considerable parts. He has given up tattooing his face, and although he
has not yet converted all the courtiers to his views, he already
experiences the well-earned satisfaction of seeing nothing on their
faces and cheeks but chaste designs, traced in thin outline. The bulk of
the nation, the landed nobility and the townspeople, cling, in this and
other respects, to their old ideas. The European population of the
Sandwich Islands is, however, swollen every day by new arrivals. There
are many reasons for this. The short distance separating the Hawaiian
Kingdom from California makes it a very interesting focus for the
clear-sighted energy of the white race. Deserters from the whaling
vessels or mutinous sailors are not the only colonists; merchants,
speculators, adventurers of all kinds, flock to the islands, build
houses, and settle down. The native race is gradually tending to mix
with the invaders and disappear. I am not sure that the present
representative and independent system of administration will not soon
give place to an ordinary government of delegates, controlled by some
great power. But of this I am certain, that the institutions that are
brought in will end by establishing themselves firmly, and the first day
of their triumph will necessarily be the last for the natives.
At San Domingo the independence is complete. There are no missionaries
to exert a veiled and absolute power, no foreign ministry to carry out
European ideas; everything is left to the inspiration of the people
itself. Its Spanish part consists of mulattoes, of whom I need say
nothing. They seem to imitate, well or badly, all that is most easily
grasped in our civilization. They tend, like all hybrids, to identify
themselves with the more creditable of the races to which they belong.
Thus they are capable, to a certain extent, of reproducing our customs.
It is not among them that we must study the question in its essence. Let
us cross the mountains that separate the Republic of San Domingo from
the State of Hayti.
We find a society of which the institutions are not only parallel to our
own, but are derived from the latest pronouncements of our political
wisdom. All that the most enlightened liberalism has proclaimed for the
last sixty years in the deliberative assemblies of Europe, all that has
been written by the most enthusiastic champions of man’s dignity and
independence, all the declarations of rights and principles—these have
all found their echo on the banks of the Artibonite. Nothing African has
remained in the statute law. All memories of the land of Ham have been
officially expunged from men’s minds. The State language has never shown
a trace of African influence. The institutions, as I said before, are
completely European. Let us consider how they harmonize with the manners
of the people.
We are in a different world at once. The manners are as depraved,
brutal, and savage as in Dahomey or among the Fellatahs.[19] There is
the same barbaric love of finery coupled with the same indifference to
form. Beauty consists in colour, and so long as a garment is of flaming
red and edged with tinsel, the owner does not trouble about its being
largely in holes. The question of cleanliness never enters anyone’s
head. If you wish to approach a high official in this country, you find
yourself being introduced to a gigantic negro lying on his back, on a
wooden bench. His head is enveloped in a torn and dirty handkerchief,
surmounted by a cocked hat, all over gold lace. An immense sword hangs
from his shapeless body. His embroidered coat lacks the final perfection
of a waistcoat. Our general’s feet are cased in carpet slippers. Do you
wish to question him, to penetrate his mind, and learn the nature of the
ideas he is revolving there? You will find him as uncultured as a
savage, and his bestial self-satisfaction is only equalled by his
profound and incurable laziness. If he deigns to open his mouth, he will
roll you out all the commonplaces which the newspapers have been
inflicting on us for the last half-century. The barbarian knows them all
by heart. He has other interests, of course, and very different
interests; but no other ideas. He speaks like Baron Holbach, argues like
Monsieur de Grimm, and has ultimately no serious preoccupation except
chewing tobacco, drinking alcohol, disembowelling his enemies, and
conciliating his sorcerers. The rest of the time he sleeps.
The State is divided among two factions. These are separated from each
other by a certain incompatibility, not of political theory, but of
skin. The mulattoes are on one side, the negroes on the other. The
former have certainly more intelligence and are more open to ideas. As I
have already remarked in the case of San Domingo, the European blood has
modified the African character. If these men were set in the midst of a
large white population, and so had good models constantly before their
eyes, they might become quite useful citizens. Unfortunately the negroes
are for the time being superior in strength and numbers. Although their
racial memory of Africa has its origin, in many cases, as far back as
their grandfathers, they are still completely under the sway of African
ideals. Their greatest pleasure is idleness; their most cogent argument
is murder. The most intense hatred has always existed between the two
parties in the island. The history of Hayti, of democratic Hayti, is
merely a long series of massacres; massacres of mulattoes by negroes, or
of negroes by mulattoes, according as the one or the other held the
reins of power. The constitution, however enlightened it may pretend to
be, has no influence whatever. It sleeps harmlessly upon the paper on
which it is written. The power that reigns unchecked is the true spirit
of these peoples. According to the natural law already mentioned, the
black race, belonging as it does to a branch of the human family that is
incapable of civilization, cherishes the deepest feelings of repulsion
towards all the others. Thus we see the negroes of Hayti violently
driving out the whites and forbidding them to enter their territory.
They would like to exclude even the mulattoes; and they aim at their
extermination. Hatred of the foreigner is the mainspring of local
politics. Owing, further, to the innate laziness of the race,
agriculture is abolished, industry is not even mentioned, commerce
becomes less every day. The hideous increase of misery prevents the
growth of population, which is actually being diminished by the
continual wars, revolts, and military executions. The inevitable result
is not far off. A country of which the fertility and natural resources
used to enrich generation after generation of planters will become a
desert; and the wild goat will roam alone over the fruitful plains, the
magnificent valleys, the sublime mountains, of the Queen of the
Antilles.[20]
Let us suppose for a moment that the peoples of this unhappy island
could manage to live in accordance with the spirit of their several
races. In such a case they would not be influenced, and so (of course)
overshadowed by foreign theories, but would found their society in free
obedience to their own instincts. A separation between the two colours
would take place, more or less spontaneously, though certainly not
without some acts of violence.
The mulattoes would settle on the seaboard, in order to keep continually
in touch with Europeans. This is their chief wish. Under European
direction they would become merchants (and especially money-brokers),
lawyers, and physicians. They would tighten the links with the higher
elements of their race by a continual crossing of blood; they would be
gradually improved and lose their African character in the same
proportion as their African blood.
The negroes would withdraw to the interior and form small societies like
those of the runaway slaves in San Domingo itself, in Martinique,
Jamaica, and especially in Cuba, where the size of the country and the
depth of the forests baffle all pursuit. Amid the varied and tropical
vegetation of the Antilles, the American negro would find the
necessities of life yielded him in abundance and without labour by the
fruitful earth. He would return quite freely to the despotic,
patriarchal system that is naturally suited to those of his brethren on
whom the conquering Mussulmans of Africa have not yet laid their yoke.
The love of isolation would be at once the cause and the result of his
institutions. Tribes would be formed, and become, at the end of a short
time, foreign and hostile to each other. Local wars would constitute the
sole political history of the different cantons; and the island, though
it would be wild, thinly peopled, and ill-cultivated, would yet maintain
a double population. This is now condemned to disappear, owing to the
fatal influence wielded by laws and institutions that have no relation
to the mind of the negro, his interests, and his wants.
The examples of San Domingo and the Sandwich Islands are conclusive. But
I cannot leave this part of my subject without touching on a similar
instance, of a peculiar character, which strongly supports my view. I
cited first a State where the institutions, imposed by Protestant
preachers, are a mere childish copy of the British system. I then spoke
of a government, materially free, but spiritually bound by European
theories; which it tries to carry out, with fatal consequences for the
unhappy population. I will now bring forward an instance of quite a
different kind; I mean the attempt of the Jesuits to civilize the
natives of Paraguay.[21]
These missionaries have been universally praised for their fine courage
and lofty intelligence. The bitterest enemies of the Order have not been
able to withhold a warm tribute of admiration for them. If any
institutions imposed on a nation from without ever had a chance of
success, it was certainly those of the Jesuits, based as they were on a
powerful religious sentiment, and supported by all the links of
association that could be devised by an exact and subtle knowledge of
human nature. The Fathers were persuaded, as so many others have been,
that barbarism occupies the same place in the life of peoples as infancy
does in the life of a man; and that the more rudeness and savagery a
nation shows, the younger it really is.
In order, then, to bring their neophytes to the adult stage, they
treated them like children, and gave them a despotic government, which
was as unyielding in its real aims, as it was mild and gracious in its
outward appearance. The savage tribes of America have, as a rule,
democratic tendencies; monarchy and aristocracy are rarely seen among
them, and then only in a very limited form. The natural character of the
Guaranis, among whom the Jesuits came, did not differ in this respect
from that of the other tribes. Happily, however, their intelligence was
relatively higher, and their ferocity perhaps a little less, than was
the case with most of their neighbours; they had, too, in some degree,
the power of conceiving new needs. About a hundred and twenty thousand
souls were collected together in the mission villages, under the control
of the Fathers. All that experience, unremitting study, and the living
spirit of charity had taught the Jesuits, was now drawn upon; they made
untiring efforts to secure a quick, though lasting, success. In spite of
all their care, they found that their absolute power was not sufficient
to keep their scholars on the right road, and they had frequent proofs
of the want of solidity in the whole structure.
The proof was complete, when in an evil hour the edict of the Count of
Aranda ended the reign of piety and intelligence in Paraguay. The
Guaranis, deprived of their spiritual guides, refused to trust the
laymen set over them by the Crown of Spain. They showed no attachment to
their new institutions. They felt once more the call of the savage life,
and to-day, with the exception of thirty-seven straggling little
villages on the banks of the Parana, the Paraguay, and the
Uruguay—villages in which the population is, no doubt, partly hybrid—the
rest of the tribes have returned to the woods, and live there in just as
wild a state as the western tribes of the same stock, Guaranis and
Cirionos. I do not say that they keep all the old customs in their
original form, but at any rate their present ones show an attempt to
revive the ancient practices, and are directly descended from them; for
no human race can be unfaithful to its instincts, and leave the path
that has been marked out for it by God. We may believe that if the
Jesuits had continued to direct their missions in Paraguay, their
efforts would, in the course of time, have had better results. I admit
it; but, in accordance with our universal law, this could only have
happened on one condition—that a series of European settlements should
have been gradually made in the country under the protection of the
Jesuits. These settlers would have mingled with the natives, have first
modified and then completely changed their blood. A State would have
arisen, bearing perhaps a native name and boasting that it had sprung
from the soil; but it would actually have been as European as its own
institutions.
This is the end of my argument as to the relation between institutions
and races.