THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 623 



clamors of a powerful and avaricious company to annul the treaty of 

 Waitangi, whicli secured the Maoris in possession of their lands. It 

 appointed successive protectors of the aborigines — incorruptible 

 officials like the late "Walter Mantell. It sent out governors whose 

 first duty was to the natives and only their second to the colonists; 

 and the reality of the guardianship is shown by the facts that it led 

 to the recall of one Governor, made a second resign, and got a third 

 so constantly into hot water with his ministers that he too was re- 

 called. Other governments have acted similarly. The wrongs of 

 the Mexicans reached the tender heart of Isabella, who did the little 

 that she could to modify the ferocity of her subjects; Las Casas was 

 appointed protector of the Indians. Certain others have a more 

 dubious record. M. de Varigny claims that merciless suppression and 

 brutal repression are alike repugnant to the French character. 

 Neither was always repugnant. It is barely half a century since 

 Pelissier smoked the Arabs in Algerian caves. " The welfare of 

 ray service requires," commanded Louis XIV, " that the number of 

 the Iroquois should be diminished as much as possible "; they were 

 to be shipped for galley slaves. In 1736 the welfare of Louisiana re- 

 quired that the Chickasaws should be reduced, and two years were 

 unsuccessfully given to that end. Severity is still less alien to the 

 German character. In 1892 and 1897 two governors of German 

 East Africa were recalled for applying too literally the avowed maxim 

 of one of them that the lower races were to be governed by " the 

 stick"; and a few months ago a third German administrator was 

 called to account for cruelty to the Africans. 



Public opinion in the mother country is usually divided; a single 

 cross-section will show in what ways. " The agnostics don't send mis- 

 sionaries to Cochin China," cries the pulpit; North America was not 

 colonized by the sensualistic school of philosophy, dogmatizes Ban- 

 croft. Yet the leaders of these very schools champion the cause of 

 the oppressed. When Governor Eyre and his subordinates were 

 prosecuted in 1866 for having suppressed a negro rebellion in 

 Jamaica with needless cruelty, it was Mill, then at the height of his 

 fame, who instituted the prosecution, and he was backed by Spencer, 

 not yet at the meridian of a career that was to eclipse Mill's, and by 

 Huxley, coiner of the word agnostic. Is it that there is a close con- 

 nection between a belief in evolution and a fellow-feeling for the 

 lower races from which we sprang? On the same side were the 

 radicals, advocates of political freedom, the philanthropists, the 

 " nonconformist conscience," and the evangelicals, who believe that 

 negroes have souls. The opposite side was led by Carlyle, fresh 

 from Frederick and his peculiar methods; Ruskin, with lance in 

 rest against a new windmill; idolized Tennyson; Kingsley and 



