182 REPORT — 1861. 



The superiority of their political institutions is proved by its fruits — a progi-ess in 

 the useful arts and an accumulation of wealth which have never existed in any 

 other Asiatic nation. In China, as in India and as in the region which lies between 

 both, we find rude, unlettered tribes, who, although of the same race as the Chinese, 

 have not participated in their civilization. These mountaineers — for such they ne- 

 cessarily are — chiefly aboimd in the less favoured provinces of the west, where the 

 gi-eat rivers have not yet attained the magnitude which confers fertility and means 

 of internal commiroication. From the Sea of Japan to the Caspian there exists a 

 vast region, for the most part steppes and sands. This is the native coimtry of the 

 Tartai-s and Turcomans — of men who, for the most part, dwell in tents, and whose 

 normal condition is as migratory as that of birds of passage. Immemorially in 

 possession of the horse, the camel, and the sheep, the very physical character of 

 their country would seem to condemn them in pei"petuity to the pastoral condition. 

 The huge peninsula of Aa-abia, although a tropical or subtropical coimtry, much 

 resembles Tartary, in the frequency of its deserts and the fewness of its fertile or 

 watered spots. The habits of its inhabitants, therefore, were generally pastoral, 

 like those of the Turks and Tartai-s. The highest civilization which the Turks ever 

 attained was in Eastern Europe and in Northern India ; the highest which the Tar- 

 tar's reached was in China, and of the Ai'abs in Spain. 



Europe is the quarter of the globe which, through the great advantages of supe- 

 rior physical geogi'aphy and superior quality of race, has attained the highest mea- 

 sui-e of civilization. Its extensive seaboard, caused by deep gulfs and inland seas ; 

 its niunerous lakes and rivers ; its many islands, with a temperate climate, afford it 

 means of industry, commerce, and intercommunication possessed by no other part 

 of the world. The superiority of its races of man is attested by an experience of 

 three thousand years. In the quality of these races among themselves there is, pro- 

 bably, no material difference ; sufficiently proved by the fact that no deterioration 

 follows their intei-mixtm-e, as shown in the instances of the very bastard people whom 

 we call French and English. The tenn Em-ope, however, is but a conventional 

 and not a ve*y well-defined one, and the advantages of physical geography and race 

 which I have ascribed to it belong especially to the southern portion, always its only 

 seats of high civilization. The sterile and oft ice-bound far North has never pro- 

 duced,and seems incapable of producing-, a great and powerful civilization. Yet from 

 the rigorous North has emanated one of the most highly-endowed races of man — 

 that which overthrew the huge structure of the Roman Empire, which in later times 

 conquered a large portion of France and the whole of Britain, and to which, above 

 all other causes, is o-wing the vigorous civilization of modem Europe and Northei-n 

 America. The vast superiority of the European over the other races of man, and 

 especially over the precocious but soon stagnant races of Asia, need not be insisted 

 on at length, and I shall confine myself to a few modem instances. Thus, but for 

 the Eui'opean race, the old and new world would have been unkno-wn to each other : 

 that race has conquered the whole new world and largely peopled it -with men more 

 civilized, more powerful, and far more numerous than its aboriginal inhabitants. 

 But for the European race, China would have been kno-svn to the rest of the world 

 only by report, and Japan and the great Indian Archipelago as unknown as Ame- 

 rica. While the Em-opean nations have virtually subdued all America, discovered 

 and conquered a fifth quarter of the globe, Australia, and conquered and occupied 

 a considerable part of Asia, no foreign race can be said to have invaded and perma- 

 nently settled m Europe. The Tm-ks conquered the weakest and most degenerate 

 portion of Em-ope, and beyond this they have never succeeded in penetrating, not- 

 Tvithstanding many attempts. They have been in Eastei-n Europe about half the 

 time that the Saracens had been in Spain, but, in the true character of an Oriental 

 race, they either refuse or are imable to keep pace with the European races, and, 

 now existing only by their sufferance, absorption or expulsion is their inevitable 

 fate. 



Tlie races of Asia (and it .affords incontestable evidence of incapacity and inapti- 

 tude) have borrowed little from Europe. I can quote but two notable exceptions — 

 tire-amis and tobacco, both of which they promptly adopted on the first opportunity. 

 They reject the printing-press, obstinately perseveiing in the slow and expensive 

 manuscript which in Europe mipeded the progress of knowledge 500 yeai-s ago. 

 They, very rarely use the mai-iner s compass, but steer along the shore, orti-ust'^to' 



