The Portland daily press., 1875-06-23
A New Slave Empire.

One of our poets declares that error once
point history and the poet are not in accord,
and he foIfeits for the time his old office of
prophet and interpreter. Errors which haye
been exposed thousand times seem to pos
sess wonderful vitality, and do not easily
pass from out the minds of men. Succeed
ing generations adopt them and suffer there
by. Sir Thomas Browne says in discoursng
of vulgar errors, "There is certain list of
vices committed i'll all ages sand declaimed
against by all authors, which will last as long
as human nature; or digested into common
places may serve for any theme and never be
out of date until doomsday." Certain falla-
cies may be placed in the same list. One
would think for example that the experience
of nations would have long ago taught TO the
civilized world the ruinous effects of an ire
deemable paper currency; but we see the
delegates of a majority of the people of one of
the r'ost populous and wealthy states of the
Union deliberately resolving that the country
should stretch still further an already over
strained credit.
A still more notable example Of persistence
In error is furnished by the great English COL
ony of Australia. 1t has been supposed with
much show of reason that the issue of our
late war had given death-blow to human
slavery among all the civilized nations of the
earth. The baseess nature of the arguments
brought to support it had been so effectually
demonstrated that no mau looked to see
them brought forward again. Ten years have
passed since the last vestige of slavery in this
country was swept away, and we see men of
a kindred race attempting to build up the sys-
TEN IN the great continent of the Southern
Pacific. That part of Australia north of the
tropic of Capricorn and lying between the
12Sth and the 13Sth parallels of longitude,
has excited much attention of late because of
its mineral and agricultural wealth. The
Australian desert, like our own, has been
proved myth, and emigration is going on
from the South Colony of which Adelaide is
the capital. The newly settled tract is un-
der the authority of South Australia. The
climate is sub'tropical, and trying for men of
northern blood. The harvest is pleateous,
but the laborers are few, and the cry, once so
familiar in this country, that the white ran
cannot work the fields, and that they must
be titled by tropical race, has been raised.
Coolies and Lascars have already been i'm.
ported in large numbers, and a system of
peonage virtually established. The white
men own the soil, and in effect own the la.
borers who till il. A class of landed proprie-
tors, who scorn manual labor as degrading,
and class of serfs, looked down upon as an
inferior and subject-race, have been formed.
The social organization of the colony is fast
approaching that which held in the Southern
States prior to the war of the rebellion. The
system of human slavery dead in the west
has been revived in the east in land under
the protection of British law.
They do not call it slavery to be sure, but
it is effect the same, and the old arguments
of climate, of the civilizing agency of serf-
dom, of the master and subject relation of
the Caucasian and alien races, the absurdity
of which has been demonstrated here, are
pun lOIWdlu IucTc Will DIS IuuCu
as though their fallacy had not been demons.
trated again and again. The system OF
course meets with material success at first
The want of cheap labor is supplied, and
great return is obtained for the products OF
the mine and the farm. The danger is not
small that it will find favor in the Southern
part of the country. Men are apt to discov-
er that climate is unfit for them to work in
so soon as they can buy or steal other men to
work for them aud make great profit
thereby.
That Australia is preparing great ills fol
herself no one who has the experience o.
this country in mind will doubt. A new
rule of international law seems called for
1t should be agreed that no nation shall take
possession of lands it cannot cultivate. L
there be countries where only the Asiatic OIL
the African can live and work such countries
should be the heritage of those races, ant
never come under the dominion OF the white
man.