Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The law that the evolution of a colony repeats the evolution of the
parent state would here be logically applied to the history of the
relations between colonies and the mother country. These would be
shown to have followed a similar course, though with new developments,
to those of the mother country with _her_ suzerain; and they would
be carried further back and deeper down to those universal animal
processes of lactation and rearing which they continue and which explain
them. The gradual settlement of a new country would next be exhibited
as a repetition (with necessary modifications) of the settlement of
the mother country, because guided by the same general laws--that
it dispossesses an earlier race, which had followed quadrupeds and
birds, which had followed trees, shrubs, and grasses, which again had
sown themselves along geographical lines. Chapters on both topics are
unavoidably omitted. The law has now to be applied to the political,
industrial, and social evolution of colonies. In so wide a subject only
_aperçus_ are possible.
There are traces in several colonies of a state anterior to the
establishment of a settled government. According to the unloving
Hobbes, such a state is necessarily one of war, and it is sometimes
that; according to the humane Rousseau, it is one of peace, and, to
the credit of human nature, it is oftener that. There were English
settlers in Pennsylvania before the Swedes arrived. The first immigrants
to Plymouth found predecessors on the coast who owed no allegiance.
Seventy years after the foundation of North Carolina the inhabitants
still led the lives of freemen in the woods. Prior to 1702 New Jersey
was considered one of those provinces "where no regular government had
been established." The Tasmanian farmers who colonized Victoria lived
for some time without any form of government, and lived peacefully.
Pastoralists were found on the Canterbury plains before the advent of
the Pilgrims, and were content. When the Pilgrims got into collision
with the central government, they said bitterly that they would
do better with none. Where it is otherwise the circumstances are
exceptional. Gold and silver fields everywhere are at first, and often
to the last, scenes of wild disorder, where a man's safety depends on
his ability to defend himself. Escaped Australian convicts, runaway
sailors, adventurers, and natives made up a community which turned the
natural paradise of the Bay of Islands into an earthly hell. Parts of
Texas in very recent days were the seat of anarchy. Government soon
arrives on the spot in the shape of the Texas Rangers, the Draconian
gold-fields mounted police, or a royal governor. Or an organized body
of immigrants absorbs previous settlers and evolves from within itself
all the agencies of government. On one or other of these two types
all colonial societies have been built up. The patriarchal theory
of Filmer is realized in those colonies--the great majority--where
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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