PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 615 



the intention regarding tlie black and tlie ability of the black so to 

 work. It is surprising, well, perhaps it should not be so surprising 

 after all, that people claiming to share the counsels of the Omniscient 

 regarding divine intentions should have such a limited acquaintance 

 with the more humble facts of science. 



4. Albinos, says Mr. Macfie, being without pigment, are liable to 

 disease from which pigmented persons are free. Are these diseases 

 to be a'>cribed to the mere want of pigment ? The fact is that the 

 albinism itself is due to a constitutional condition of the body, on which 

 the diseases enumerated also depend. 



5. Suppose we grant, what Mr. Macfie says a forcible writer has 

 truly said, that " The white man can no more run the equator than 

 he can run the North Pole"; I ask, by what canon of logic or by 

 what method in science does it thence follow that the black man can 

 run either or both ? 



6. Mr. Macfie raises an interesting question by his quotation about 

 third and fourth generations of whites in the tropics. Apparently, he 

 has no difficulty in drawing a conclusion from it, and building a super- 

 structure on the foundation of the inference. I would remind you 

 that about 20 years ago Dr. Cantlie said the same thing about Londoners 

 in almost exactly the same words. Third generations of pure Londoners 

 were not of much account, and all his quests to discover a fourth genera- 

 tion Londoner had been barren. I do not find that on that account 

 anyone has proposed either to abolish London or to bring in another 

 race — black, white, yellow, or brown — to supplant the English in that 

 city, as being more fitted according to " scientific " arguments to live 

 and flourish there. I imagine there is something in the logic of vital 

 statistics that Mr. Macfie has not mastered. 



7. Mr. Macfie refers to a certain report on the Northern Territory, 

 in which the writer states that he shares the opinion that tropical 

 agriculture in the Northern Territory cannot be developed with white 

 labor. I have read that report carefully and critically, and I fail to 

 find anywhere, either expressed or implied, an intimation that this 

 impossibility of development is due to the inability of the white man 

 to live and work in that region. I repeat that the question of white 

 and black labor in the tropics is a commercial one, not a health one. 

 It is becoming recognised more and more that the subject of colonising 

 the tropics by white individuals is synonymous with the prevention 

 of endemic and epidemic diseases, a matter within the power of the 

 settler. No fact established by science has ever been of so great com- 

 mercial and political value as this recent discovery. 



I would sum up the relation of the section to Mr. Macfie's paper 

 thus : — The question is, " Can the white man live and work in the 

 tropics as well as the black can ? " That may be answered without 

 reference to any theories of science, simply as a matter of evidence. 

 If the answer is " No," then the question, " Why can he not ? " is 

 within the sphere of science. 



I hold no brief for a White Australia. To me, as a member of 

 this Section, commercial and political considerations are immaterial ;. 



