COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY. 143 



quest. It surrendered, in 1854, its sovereignty over the Boers of the 

 Orange River. That surrender was condemned by British governors, 

 is still condemned by historians, and was disliked by the wealthier and 

 more intelligent Boers; how wise and just it was is shown by the 

 jealousy with which the republic has since watched over its independ- 

 ence. To its eternal honor — or rather to that of Gladstone — it nobly 

 gave back the Transvaal to its stalwart farmers. France long relin- 

 quished Algeria and Madagascar, which her missions and commercial 

 stations in the seventeenth century gave her a prescriptive right to 

 occupy two centuries later. It refused to support De La Tours, and 

 abandoned Labourdonnais and Dupleix. Through mere inertia Portu- 

 gal has let slip from her hands a grand inheritance. The Dutch re- 

 pressed the extension of their colony at the Cape. Java flourishes, but 

 Dutch New Guinea lies rotting. 



A species, extending beyond its original habitat, has often to 

 battle with lower species already in possession of that portion of the 

 earth or water. So, except in rare cases, occupation means the neces- 

 sity of conquest. The Puritans, as they advanced into the interior, had 

 to fight for the possession of New England. The nomadic Australian 

 blacks offered no resistance to the earliest settlers, but as they were 

 driven inward they disputed, and are still fiercely disputing, every foot 

 of territory. As the indigenes rise in the scale, have clearings and 

 cultivate the soil, the resistance increases. No savage peoples have 

 cost the invaders so much in disturbance, blood and treasure as the 

 Indians, Maoris, Kaffirs and Algerian Arabs. Mashonaland was occu- 

 pied by the Chartered Company without firing a shot or losing a life, 

 but it had soon to fight for possession. The incessant turmoil, though 

 the waves of it spread to the remote mother country, affects the settlers 

 mainly. The blood shed is both colonial and metropolitan. The 

 ]S'orth American settlers fought their own hard battles; though British 

 troops engaged, to their cost, with the Indians, it was against these as 

 allies of the French; in recent years the British garrison in Canada has 

 been employed against the half-castes. In New Zealand colonial volun- 

 teers joined with the regular troops to defeat the Maoris, and 'the 

 former were sometimes found the more efficient. 



The most picturesque conquests in history were effected by private 

 enterprise. Mexico was conquered by local recruits. Pizarro was au- 

 thorized to conquer Peru in the name of the Spanish crown, and, besides 

 various other encouragements, he received a modest sum from the 

 Spanish treasury. But it was again by local recruits, not one of them 

 furnished by the Spanish Government, that the conquest was made and 

 maintained. Algeria has a very different story to tell. The troops em- 

 ployed in effecting a difficult conquest spread over thirty years were 

 French from first to last. In general, it may be said that where there 



