298 National Life and Character 



tains. Tropical America is parceled out among 

 States partly of European blood, and mainly Euro- 

 pean in thought, speech and religion ; while tropical 

 Asia and Africa have been divided among Euro- 

 pean powers, and are held in more or less complete 

 subjection by their military and civil agents. It is 

 no wonder that men who are content to look at 

 things superficially, and who think that the ten- 

 dencies that have triumphed during the last two 

 centuries are as immutable in their workings as 

 great natural laws, should speak as if it were a mere 

 question of time when the civilized peoples should 

 overrun and occupy the entire world, exactly as they 

 now do Europe and North America. 



Mr. Pearson points out with great clearness the 

 groundlessness of this belief. He deserves especial 

 praise for discriminating between the importance 

 of ethnic, and of merely political, conquests. The 

 conquest by one country of another populous coun- 

 try always attracts great attention at the time, and 

 has wide momentary effects ; but it is of insignificant 

 importance when compared with the kind of armed 

 settlement which causes new nations of an old stock 

 to spring up in new countries. The campaigns car- 

 ried on by the lieutenants of Justinian against Goth 

 and Vandal, Bulgarian and Persian, seemed in the 

 eyes of civilized Europe at that time of incalculably 

 greater moment than the squalid warfare being 

 waged in England between the descendants of Low 

 Dutch sea-thieves and the aboriginal British. Yet, 

 in reality, it was of hardly any consequence in his- 



