The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1885-12-05
The March of the White Man.
From The Spectator.

From. The Spectator.
Among the little-noticed but most i'm
portant facts in the history of the world is
the enormous recent increase in the num-
ber of white men in it. 1t is barrel y two
centuries (1693) since those races, though
even then the most energetic OF mankind,
formed but small fraction in the total OF
humanity-probably ten per cent. of the
whole-and were by no means certain
that they could defend themselves against
the remainder. The stream of Asiatic
conquest had not stopped, for the Turks
were at the gates of Vienna; an African
feet was dominant in the Mediterranean;
Asia knew nothing of the whites except
in one or two tolerated settlements on the
coast fringe of India; Africa belonged ex-
clusively to Africans; and though the
whites had mastered South America, where,
read in the light of subsequent history,
their conquests were incredibly rapid, most
part of North America still felt Indian
wars to be terrible and even formidable
events. Even a hundred years later the
white people, though under the operation
of the still unexplained law which at one
time fosters and at another time restricts
the growth of people they were increas-
ing slowly, were still only hundred and
fifty millions, or probably seventh of the
population of the globe. They had, in
deed ann naked the two Americas and
northern Asia, thus quintupling the area
of thuir estate upon the planet, and prob
ably multiplying their fixed wealth by at
least twentyfold-a country being always
the largest item in the wealth of any race
or nation-but they had only begun to
settle in the western continent; they had
but commenced to conquer in southern
Asia; they had visited, but not occupied,
Australia; and in eastern Europe and west
ern Asia they were only slaves to an Asi-
attic horde. The century, however, ending
1884, has been marked by an advance so
rapid and SO unbroken as to be scarcely ly credi-
BILE. and to present one of the most startling
facts in history. The white races in and
out of Europe, under the influence of some
still mysterious call upon their energies,
have multiplied nearly threefold, and are
to-day, as Mr.. R. Giffen has shown in his
recent address to the Statistical Society,
four hundred and twenty millions. AS
there is no evidence of any corresponding
increase in the dark races, and as, indeed,
such increase has been, outside India,
nearly impossible, the white men are now,
by the best calculations, one-third of the
entire population of the world, instead Of
being, as they were only two centuries ago,
little more than ten per cent. They
have, moreover, if anything, increased in
physical strength, and have so developed
in brain, and consequent power of organi-
cation, that it may be doubted if the whole
remainder of mankind, even if all were
reduced to equal weapons, could seriously
tiniure the white third, which again, if il
chose to act together and employ without
pity the weapons its intelligence has en-.
abied it to construct, could in few years
reduce the remainder of the world to an
uninhabited desert Except in the South
Pacific, where, by one means or another,
they kill out the darker men, the white
races show no tendency of that kind
though we take it in the dawn of history
they exterminated pretty freely, especially
in India-but they do show strong dis
position to take possession of the whole
earth, and govern it as they please. The
Chinese are the only great race remaining
which can be said to be truly independent
and free from the predominating influence
more or less directly exercised, of the ener-
getic white men, who pour in increasing
streams over the remainder of the earth'i
surface. They, indeed, alone traverse the
ocean. The Chinese keep few ships; and
few small vessels manned by dark sailors
mostly pirates or slaves, or pilgrim carriers
still hang about the coasts Of southern Asia
or eastern Africa; but the fighting naviel
of the world, and its great transport ships
and its mercantile marine, are all alike
white. No dark race could lombard /
white harbor or transport an army across
hundred miles of sea in the face of pro
hibition from white men, who now exclu