The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-10-28

. F%@t@%fg iSN~%1fth - - ~r "'H G@~ '"@~N
races increase, become stationary, or decrease in
numbers. Some economists used TO believe that
they had discovered a Itw-namely, that races
increased under prosperity, that plenty Of food
meant plenty Of population, that with manufac-
lures states obtained more hands to work them /;
but it was entirely opposed 10 the facts of his
tory, which show that one Of the most miserable
Of earthly races-the Irish under the penal laws
multiplied like flies while another race of the
same blood and under nearly the same conditions
the French peasantry under LOUIS XV-were
slowly P~erishing away. The Negro slaves of the
South, amid all their Toll and with oil their poor
food, increased faster than their masters. Sta
tistics show that the English people in the Yves
tern States y the Union tend always to increase.
though the same people in the Eastern States arc
dying slowly out while n people as brave, as
strong, and once as prosperous as they are, with
lands as wiG5 and far moro fertile, with n historvi
Of conquest behind them. ard everything to gain
from the increase OF their numbers, Is stationary
everywhere and in some places slowly raceding.
If there Is a law proportioning population to
means of subsistence, Why do net tie Sraniards
and Portuguese, who still own wider and fairer
territories than we English, Eli them up with
population, while MongOlians increase till China
cannot contain them and Bcngalccs multiply
under foreign domination until the problem cTSe7
feeding them is studied as one Of the gravest 81
the future? The fierce beeE-fe1 islanders of
whom Froissart wrote were rs we'll off rs ever
Englishmcn have been, as we'll off rs Ohio cit
gems are now yet the population of Britain in
creased almost impreccptibly, while in Ohio the
same race advance now by leaps and bounds.
To toll, &c opfJo-,oa =. 81. r.
back the question one step, the secret of liability
to e~pidemics being but one Of the secrets OF in
crease or decrease of population.
. Indeed 1T is very doubtful if prosperity or
the provisions of means OF subsistence is the
ultimate cause Of increase of population, for the
upper classes die ont sooner than the lower and
one main difficulty of civilization is to keep Gull
turc sufficiently hereditary. After a thousand
years Of leudalism, the noble classes of France
were ascertained, says De Tocqueville, when the
Revolution broke out, not to reach 200 900 in
number; while the Patriciat of Rome, the best
off class that ever existed, died completely out
If the explanation is health, why does not the
Jewish race, which has had nearly two thousand
years in whicll to spread abroad, which thrives
in all chimes and under all conditions which
49, HNA fNNhHSo tHA hhiIh
three Thousand years ago established a sanitary
code, number two hundred millions, as had they
been Englishmen they would have done? They
were oppressed -? Yes and so were the Irish,
and so are the Chinese and the Bengalees, with.
at least, as grievous an oppression, different as it
may be in kind. Why do not the weli-to do,
brave, and physically powerful Parsees show
any tendency to regain the numbers they possess
cd before the Mussulmans so nearly extirpated
them? If the secret is race, why did the Greek
people, after swarmins over the islands and Asia
Minor and Egypt, leave off spreading and become
stationary! Nobody is depressing Greeks in
Greece, ard yet Greece is not filed up. Why is
not an island like Samos eaten up, as ireland
was, by its own children? Peasant-proprieto
ship answers The Times, which, with equal
divisions Of property, always tend to keep down
the number of n population afraid to become too
poor. Very good. That is definite and intelligi-
BILE but will The Times just explain why those
other peasant-proprietors, the majority of men
in the United States, do not die out, while their
rivals, the Spanish in South America, do, or
why Bengalees, every one OF whom is q peasant
proprietor, living under the most peremptory
laws of equal division of property, are becoming
too numerous for their land? 1t is all climate |
Very good but which climate breeds large races?
We English grow and grow in the North, and
the Bengalees grow and grow in the South, and
Provencals do not grow in their lovely land,
and Italians grow slowly in their equally lovely
one, and the Spaniards in Chill, which is Italy
over again, are nearly stationary while the
Irish, in their cold, humid country, grew too
fast, till Nature avenged herself in 4 lrightful
famine. Why does not q race like the Dutch,
which can colonize, and fight, and sail ships, and
blunder about the world just as we and the Ger
manas do, grow ont Of its dykes, rs either Of the
families would? There is no room?
There is endless room in Scandinavia and Hol-
stein, and the Scandinavians and IiolsteineTs,
who once settled here and in America have
grown to seventy millions. in their own terri
tories scarcely grow Mt all. Is 1t religion? Well,
the five most rapid-increasing races are the En-
glish Protestants, the Irish Catholics, the Ger
Freethinkers, the Bengalee i%dOlators, and
the Chinese wOrshipers of the Manchester idols.
Is it virtue Chinese swarm and Puritans decay.
Is it energetic extraordinary force which ap-
pears in each race at som moments of its history,
and after a longer or shorter period dies out2
Well. there is something to be said for that solu-
ton, vague and indefinite as it is. The great
period Of some races-as the Roman, the Sran-
ish, the Arab-has been synclronous with their
swarming period but still that does not explain
facts like the population of Ireland, or the in
crease Of the Negroes in slavery, or the advance
Of the Bengalees, or the swarming ont Of the
Chinese everywhere, or, above all. the increase
on strong evidence, to be occurring
lmong the Slayons. The French must have in
creased once. Why not again The English
population fell back once. Why not again?
The circumstances of say Michigan are said to be