206 Inquiries into Human Faculty
The West Indian Islands have had their population absolutely swept away since the time of the Spanish Conquest, except in a few rare instances, and African Negroes have been substituted for them.
Australia and New Zealand tell much the same tale as Canada. A native population has been almost extinguished in the former and is swamped in the latter, under the pressure of an immigrant population of Europeans, which is now twelve times as numerous as the Maories. The time during which this great change has been effected is less than that covered by three generations.
To this brief -sketch of changes of population in very recent periods, I might add the wave of Arab admixture’ that has extended from Egypt and the northern provinces of Africa into the Soudan, and that of the yellow races of China, who have already made their industrial and social influence felt in many distant regions, and who bid fair hereafter, when certain of their peculiar religious fancies shall have fallen into decay, to become one of the most effective of the colonising nations, and who may, as I trust, extrude hereafter the coarse and lazy Negro from at least the metaliferous regions of tropical Africa.
It is clear from what has been said, that men of former generations have exercised enormous influence over the human stock of the present day, and that the average humanity of the world now and in future years is and will be very different to what it would have been if the action of our forefathers had been different. The power in man of varying the future human stock vests a great responsibility in the hands of each fresh generation, which has not yet been recognised at its just importance, nor deliberately employed. It is foolish to fold the hands and to say that nothing can be done, inasmuch as social forces and self-interests are too strong to be resisted. They need not be resisted; they can be guided. It is one thing to check the course of a huge steam vessel by the shock of a sudden encounter when she is going at full speed in the wrong direction, and another to cause her to change her course slowly and gently by a slight turn of the helm.
