146 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the former contribute immediately practicable proposals. Kussia, Ger- 

 many, France, and Great Britain — the four grasping powers — along 

 with Italy and Belgium, are now, after a digestive interval of thirty 

 years, carrying out a suggestion made by Kenan in 1871. The Chinese, 

 who threw off the yoke of the conquering Mongols, belong (it appears) 

 by ordination of Nature to the subject races. The people that pro- 

 duced Confucius and Lao-tze consist of laboring men who need direc- 

 tion and organization. China, therefore, calls for conquest. The 

 powers have obeyed the call, and that vast and peaceful land is now 

 undergoing dismemberment, with a view to final wholesale partition. 

 It is a parallel to the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards. In both 

 countries a more perfect civilization of a lower type was or will be 

 superseded by a less perfect civilization of a higher type. In this alone 

 lies its assumed justification. Evidently the argument may be carried 

 far. It would justify Russia in occupying Turkey, the United States 

 in conquering not only Spanish colonies but Spain itself. It was the 

 moral justification of the Gothic invasions of the early Christian cen- 

 turies. It is a sentence of death or (it may be) of new life to all 

 moribund nationalities. 



Other modes of acquiring colonies are by cession and by purchase. 

 The former is often disguised conquest, like that of the Cape to Eng- 

 land. The latter may be so as well, like that of the African diamond 

 fields by England. Colbert bought, for less than a million francs, 

 certain of the West India Islands and the Antilles. The United 

 States has bought her last colonies from dying Spain for four million 

 pounds. At no distant time the Australian colonies will probably buy 

 France and Germany out of the Pacific, and Holland and Germany out 

 of New Guinea. It will be none the less a moral conquest. The 

 right of the stronger, or the more fit to colonize, will still be, as it ever 

 has been, the sole title to possess. 



By these various means habitats have been found for future colonies, 

 spheres for future colonial expansion. 



[To be continued.] 



