308 



and numbers was slow as compared witli modern ones, but their advance in 

 the arts of civilization and of social life was never checked. In modern colonies, 

 on the other hand, an immense extent of fertile land is sought for, and when 

 obtained, is abandoned to the first occupier, who, relying upon the protection 

 of the mother country, takes up a portion out of all proportion to his strength 

 to cultivate, his capital to improve, or his wants to consume the produce. 

 Masters at once of large tracts of country, which they hold, either by force or 

 by purchase, they do not husband any of the benefits of nature. They clear 

 the forests by fire, or by barking the trees, leaving them to decay where they 

 stand ; they abandon every system of manuring, of improvement, and of the 

 rotation of crops. They apply themselves to benefit by the natural advantages 

 of the soil, to which they sacrifice all others ; they exhaust it by a succession of 

 the same crops, and soon reduce the lichest land to comparative sterility. 



In the old colonies the different conditions of the citizens did not act as 

 with us, or in our colonies, by a universal rivalry of one another, but, on the 

 contrary, all felt a common interest, which had relation also to the aborigines. 

 Intercourse with them could alone feed the colony at its commencement, and 

 the means of gaining their friendship, of obtaining their confidence, and of 

 establishing between them and the colonists common signs, or a conventional 

 language, was the business of all and the urgent interest of all. At the same 

 time it was from these aborigines that all danger arose, and watchfulness of them 

 and defence against them, in the case of any sudden quarrel, were also interests 

 felt by all. Now, on the contrary, wherever European colonization takes 

 place, the colonists preserve all the incidents annexed to the different conditions 

 of the citizens, both in relation to themselves and to the aborigines ; all engage 

 in rivalry as to rank and wealth, the latter frequently securing the former, 

 with but little relation to those higher grounds upon which alone superiority 

 of position ought to be admitted. Intercourse with the aborigines is main- 

 tained on a footing of friendship only until the colonists are strong enough to 

 be independent of them, and then we see the former rapidly become degraded, 

 those who had previously held high rank amongst them, first losing their 

 status, whilst the race itself soon dies out. It is indeed a fact, which does not 

 admit of doubt, which is even presented to us as a law of nature, — as a necessity, 

 — that wherever a white race comes into contact with an indigenous dark race, 

 on ground suitable to the former, the latter must disappear in a few generations. 

 It will be said that the parallel I have drawn offers but a gloomy picture, but 

 in its main features I think its truth is indisputable. However, I will now 

 deal with my subject in those respects in which it may offer us more pleasing 

 grounds of thought. 



The general effects of human action in altering the surface of the earth 

 and its natural productions have been thus eloquently described by Mr. George 

 P. Marsh, an American author of great research and intelligence : — 



"It is certain that man has done much to mould the form of the earth's 

 surface, though we cannot always distinguish between the results of his action, 

 and the effects of purely geological causes ; that the destruction of the forests, 

 the drainage of lakes and marshes, and the operations of rural husbandry and 

 industrial art have tended to produce great changes in the hygro metric, thermo- 

 metric, electric, and chemical condition of the atmosphere, though we are not 

 yet able to measure the force of the different elements of disturbance, or to say 

 how far they have been compensated by each other, or by still obscurer 

 influences ; and, finally, that the myriad forms of animal and vegetable life, 

 which covered the earth when man first entered upon the theatre of a nature, 

 whose harmonies he was destined to derange, have been, through his action, 

 greatly changed in numerical proportion, sometimes much modified in form 

 and product, and sometimes entirely extirpated. 



