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,[1] 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
- ↑ A. von Humboldt, Examen critique de I'histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent, vol. ii, pp. 129-30.
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