30 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as gambling deteriorates and demoralizes the individual, so the 

 greed for dominion demoralizes governments. The welfare of the 

 people is little cared for, except so far as to make them submissive 

 taxpayers, enabling the ruling and moneyed classes to extend their 

 sway over new territories and to create well-paid places and ex- 

 citing work for their sons and relatives. 



Hence, says Wallace, comes the force that ever urges on the 

 increase of armaments and the extension of empire. Great vested 

 interests are at stake, and ever-gTowing pressure is brought to bear 

 upon the too-willing governments in the name of the greatness 

 of the country, the extension of commerce, or the advance of civili- 

 zation. This state of things is not progress, but retrogression. 

 It will be held by the historian of the future to show that we of 

 the nineteenth century were morally and socially unfit to possess 

 the enormous powers for good and evil which the rapid advance of 

 scientific discovery has given us, that our boasted civilization was 

 in many respects a mere superficial veneer, and that our methods 

 of government were not in accord with either Christianity or civi- 

 lization. 



Comparing the conduct of these modern nations, who call them- 

 selves Christian and civilized, with that of the Spanish conquerors 

 of the West Indies, Mexico, and Peru, and making some allow- 

 ances for differences of race and public opinion, Wallace says there 

 is not much to choose between them. 



Wealth and territory and native labor were the real objects in 

 both cases, and if the Spaniards were more cruel by nature and 

 more reckless in their methods the results were much the same. 

 In both cases the country was conquered and thereafter occupied 

 and governed by the conquerors frankly for their own ends, and 

 with little regard for the feelings or the well-being of the con- 

 quered. If the Spaniards exterminated the natives of the West 

 Indies, we, he says, have done the same thing in Tasmania and 

 about the same in temperate Australia. Their belief that they 

 were really serving God in converting the heathen, even at the 

 point of the sword, was a genuine belief, shared by priests and 

 conquerors alike — not a mere sham as ours is when we defend our 

 conduct by the plea of " introducing the blessings of civilization." 



It is quite possible, says Wallace, that both the conquest of 

 Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards and our conquest of South Af- 

 rica may have been real steps in advance, essential to human prog- 

 ress, and helping on the future reign of true civilization and the 

 well-being of the human race. But if so, we have been and are 

 unconscious agents in hastening the " far-off divine event." We 

 deserve no credit for it. Our aims have been for the most part 



