Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
While holding out this tempting bait to merchants, manufacturers, and
the moneyed classes generally, Mr. Stanley declines to dilate upon the
advantages of the Congo basin as a field for immigration. That portion
of it which in his view "is blessed with a temperature under which
Europeans may thrive and multiply" is at present inaccessible to
settlers. It is "the cautious trader, who advances, not without the
means of retreat," who is to act as the pioneer and the missionary of
civilization, stimulating and directing the industry of the natives. The
suppression of the internal slave-trade is another object to be aimed
at,--one which Mr. Stanley, in an address recently delivered in London,
held up as capable of accomplishment by an outlay of five thousand
pounds a year. What rebate should be made, on this point and on others,
from the anticipations which a sanguine temperament, that has enabled
its possessor to struggle with so many difficulties and to achieve so
many enterprises, would naturally tend to heighten and render glowing,
is a question that may be reserved for those whom it directly concerns.
Equatorial Africa is not likely ever to become the home of a white
population, but it need not for that reason be left to "stew in its own
juice." On the contrary, it offers on that very account a fit subject
for the experiment, which has nowhere yet been adequately tried, of
developing latent capacities for progress in races that have raised
themselves above the level of absolute savagery without attaining to
those ideals which, never wholly realized, are essential to continuous
improvement. It has been found easy to enslave, to debase, to
exterminate races in this condition, while the ill success of efforts to
enlighten and elevate them has led to the inference that this is
impracticable. The trial, however, will not have been made till the
counteracting influences have ceased to act, or at least to predominate,
and time has been allowed for hidden forces that may possibly exist to
be called into play. As Mr. Stanley observes, "It is out of the
fragments of warring myriads that the present polished nations of Europe
have sprung. Had a few of those waves of races flowing and eddying over
Northern Africa succeeded in leaping the barrier of the equator, we
should have found the black aboriginal races of Southern Africa very
different from the savages we meet to-day."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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