The Elizabethan Anglo-Saxon wandering out on the Empire trail treated
with cruelty and contempt the Gentile races which he encountered. He has
since learned to treat them with kindness and contempt. But he has never
sunk the contempt, and the contempt saves him from any general practice
of miscegenation. In ruling the blind heathen, more fussy peoples fail
because they wish to set the heathen right: to induce the barbarian to
become as they are. The Anglo-Saxon does not particularly wish to set
the heathen right. He is right: that suffices. It is not possible for
inferior races ever to be like him. It is wise, therefore, to let them
wallow. So long as they give to him the proper reverence, he is
satisfied. Thus the superb, imperturbable Anglo-Saxon holds aloof from
inferior races: governs them coolly, on the whole justly; but never
attempts to share their life. His plan is to enforce strictly from a
subject people the one thing that he wants of them, and to leave the
rest of their lives without interference. They may fill the interval
with hoodoo rites, caste divisions or Mumbo-Jumbo worship, as they
please. So long as such diversions have no seditious tendencies they are
viewed, if not with approval, at least with tolerance. Indeed, if that
be suitable to his purpose, the Anglo-Saxon governor of the heathen will
subsidise the Dark Races' High Priest of Mumbo-Jumbo. Thus a favourite
British remedy for the sorcerer, who is the great evil of the South Sea
Islands, is not a crusade against sorcery, which would be very
troublesome and rather useless, but to purchase over the chief
sorcerers--who come very cheap when translated into English
currency--and make them do their incantations on behalf of orderly
government (insisting, by the way, on more faithful service than Balaam
gave).
It is his race arrogance, equally with his robust common-sense, that
makes the Anglo-Saxon the ideal coloniser and governor of Coloured
Races: and there is no room for miscegenation in an ideal system.
America, considered in its two sections, Latin America and Anglo-Saxon
America, gives a good opportunity for comparison of colonising methods.
To-day North of the 30th parallel the Republic of the United States
shows as the greatest White nation of the world, greatest in population
and material prosperity; and the young nation of Canada enters buoyantly
upon the path of a big career. South of that parallel there are great
populations, but they are poor in resources, and as a rule poorly
governed, poorly educated. Some of the Latin-American races show
promise--Chili and the Argentine Republic most of all,--yet none is
comparable or ever likely to be comparable with the Republic of North
America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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