THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES.
WE do not like Mr. Rhodes, who plays the game of empire too much for his own hand, but his specu- lations as to the future are usually interesting. He always thinks on the large scale—indeed, there must be a curious vein of dreaminess running through his otherwise self-seeking character—he is troubled by no scruples and dismayed by no fears, and he fixes his regard exclusively on what Carlyle called "the mights of man." What a man or a race can profitably do, that he conceives will be done, and right and wrong may take care of themselves. This concentration of view often deceives, but it lends to his predictions the interest one often finds in the prophecies of a fanatic. You can see a narrow point further through a tube than without one. Mr. Rhodes has been prophesy- ing to an interviewer about the future of the United States, and certainly no one can accuse his anticipations of being small. He regards the conquest of the Philip- pines as a bagatelle, a mere accident in the march of ex- pansion, and predicts that within a century the United States will conquer all the Republics between Texas and Tierra del Fuego,—that is, the entire Spanish and Lusi- tanian world within the Western Hemisphere. They will conquer them, he says plainly, "by force of arms," and will "take charge of the barbarians," Spaniards, Portu- guese, half-breeds, and Indians,—that is, will govern them trom above through a great colonial service, which he says the Union can organise as easily as a new and powerful Navy. That is bold speaking—we should be sorry, if Mr. Rhodes appeared in Cadiz, Mexico, Valpa- raiso, or Buenos Ayres, to guarantee his life—and at first sight it appears to be in accord with many visible facts. As the American people grow thick upon the land they will feel the land hunger as they did when they bought Louisiana and Florida, conquered Texas, and compelled the cession of California. Their "path ot empire" seems to point southward, where lie half- derelict States like Brazil, of a value which Europe as yet does not adequately appreciate, and where the existing occupants have no solid means of resisting domination. They are few, they are not homogeneous— for though all the Indians in Spanish America have been deeply " Hispaniolised" they remain separate still—and they neither develop strength nor attract strength suffi- cient to drive back the terrible rush of intelligent force which, if the United States ever grow crowded, will inevitably be driven upon them. Many Americans say they will never attempt such a task, but we do not greatly believe in the humility of any race, and see no reason in history to fancy that any of the great white races if sorely tempted will shrink from conquest, and especially the conquest of peoples with whom they have no sympathy, whom they think inefficient, or from understanding whom they are barred off by the impassable barrier of colour. It is quite conceivable that fifty years hence, when the Union contains a hundred and twenty millions of white men eager for physical wellbeing, Mr. Rhodes's dreams may be reproduced as curiously accurate prophecies.
And yet things may go so very differently. The verdict of history, to begin with, is not in favour of world- wide dominations, and the mastery of the two Americas would be the domination of a separate world. Conquering energy, like every other energy, has its limits. Something scarcely perceptible barred the march of the Phalanx, which ought to have reached Bengal, if not Ceylon ; and arrested as by divine fiat the flight of the Roman eagles, which ought at least to have reached the debouchure of the Euphrates. A comparatively small body of mail- clad, men under Charles Martel stopped for ever the northward rush of the Arab, and a handful of Slav cavalry under Sobieski turned back the Turk from the West. The Tartar torrent, which threatened to drown Europe, lost its momentum as it spread round the Caspian and into Russia, and after drowning those regions for two centuries, dried up, one scarcely can per- ceive why. The resistance of small peoples is sometimes very formidable, or Switzerland would not be a Republic, and the energy of the Americans may not prove persistent enough for the vast task of conquest and occupation which Mr. Rhodes sets before them. Their system, it must be remembered, though it produces men of ability, is probably not favourable to the development of meteoric genius, and without a man of that kind the work would hardly be done rapidly. Eating up South America like an artichoke, State by State, would be a task to over- strain any people, even the American. Brazil alone would take twenty years to subjugate and fifty to fill, even if the Union settled her coloured races over the malarious section of the vast Republic. The work, too, in the doing might bring to a, head the great danger of the United States, the difference of ideal, and of per- manent tendency, between the North and the South. That difference is supposed to have been founded upon slavery, and to have been extinguished by emancipation, but that may prove a short-sighted view The people of hot climates tend to differ greatly from the people of cold, nor will a race which has to govern subordinates ever quite agree with a race which, as a principle, accepts equality. Our own South African colonists differ in many essential respects, and in most political ideas, from Canadians or Australians, and if the Anglo-Indians numbered ten millions, and could dwell in India, they would not obey the central power for a generation. It is true that the State system as worked in America is a wonderful instrument of empire—we have adopted it ourselves in great part for the free Colonies—but it is also a wonderful provision for disin- tegration. The North may refuse to persist in a career of conquest which wearies it, and with Canada may elect to form a Republic with another ideal than that of governing, which latter, though attractive, wears out the surplus energy of the governors. The English will feel this, probably through financial pressure, before the next century is finished ; and the English, though they are fiercely self-governing, have the monarchical tradition in their brains, and set about governing with consciences entirely unmoved by the thought that governing may be wrong, and that the anarchy of the Genevan way of thinking may have more life in it than the majestic unity of Rome.
Most men who dream like Mr. Rhodes unconsciously assume a datum without which their dreams are vain, that the wish of the people or the State which they take as their instrument of power will last unchanged continuously through many generations. It may, for the wish of Rome continued unchanged through cen- turies. but we can see no record that Hadrian's order calling back and fixing the place of the god Terminus ever created mutiny even among the soldiers. Napoleon's Marshals latterly hated his wars, and it is very doubt- ful, if France had been left to him, as was for some weeks intended, with her old boundaries, whether the new generation would have suffered his son to recommence them. Nations get tired like individuals, and are subject to marvellous changes of opinion or of mood. The writer is old enough to remember when there was hardly a man in England of the statesman calibre who had patience with the idea of expansion, or indeed of empire, and he has read despatch after despatch prohibiting in the most imperative terms any extension of British rule in India. If any one tells us that the United States will expand to the Straits of Magellan in spite of themselves, we may believe him ; but if he says, as Mr. Rhodes says, that this expansion will be deliberate, we hesitate, and ask for evidence that the wish to expand will last. It may if the crowding does, but of all laws that concern the world, the law under which populations expand or contract is that of which we know least. Suppose the rate of multiplication in America declined to the rate prevalent in England through the reign of Elizabeth, when our people were probably healthier, better fed, and fuller of ideas than at any other period ?
Previous page
