I have already mentioned that as nations become greater, more powerful, and more civilized, their blood loses its purity and their instincts are gradually altered. As a result, it becomes impossible for them to live happily under the laws that suited their ancestors. New generations have new customs and tendencies, and profound changes in the institutions are not slow to follow. These are more frequent and far-reaching in proportion as the race itself is changed; while they are rarer, and more gradual, so long as the people is more nearly akin to the first founders of the State. In England, where modifications of the stock have been slower and, up to now, less varied than in any other European country, we still see the institutions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries forming the base of the social structure. We find there, almost in its first vigour, the communal organization of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, the same method of giving the nobility a share in the government, the same gradations of rank in this nobility, the same respect for old families tempered with the same love of low-born merit. Since James I, however, and especially since the Union under Queen Anne, the English blood has been more and more prone to mingle with that of the Scotch and Irish, while other nations have also helped, by imperceptible degrees, to modify its purity. The result is that innovations have been more frequent in our time than ever before, though they have always remained fairly faithful to the spirit of the original constitution.
In France, intermixture of race has been far more common and varied. In some cases, by a sudden turn of the wheel, power has even passed from one race to another. Further, on the social side, there have been complete changes rather than modifications, and these were more or less far-reaching, as the groups that successively held the chief power were more or less different. While the north of France was the preponderating element in national politics, feudalism—or rather a degenerate parody of feudalism—maintained itself with fair success; and the municipal spirit followed its fortunes. After the expulsion of the English, in the fifteenth century, and the restoration of national independence under Charles VII, the central provinces, which had taken the chief part in this revolution and were far less Germanic in race than the districts beyond the Loire, naturally saw their Gallo-Roman blood predominant in the camp and the council-chamber. They combined the taste for military life and foreign conquest—the heritage of the Celtic race—with the love of authority that was innate in their Roman blood; and they turned the current of national feeling in this direction. During the sixteenth century they largely prepared the ground on which, in 1599, the Aquitanian supporters of Henry IV, less Celtic though still more Roman than themselves, laid the foundation stone of another and greater edifice of absolute power. When Paris, whose population is certainly a museum of the most varied ethnological specimens, had finally gained dominion over the rest of France owing to the centralizing policy favoured by the Southern character, it had no longer any reason to love, respect, or understand any particular tendency or tradition. This great capital, this Tower of Babel, broke with the past—the past of Flanders, Poitou, and Languedoc—and dragged the whole of France into ceaseless experiments with doctrines that were quite out of harmony with its ancient customs.
We cannot therefore admit that institutions make peoples what they are in cases where the peoples themselves have invented the institutions. But may we say the same of the second hypothesis, which deals with cases where a nation receives its code from the hands of foreigners powerful enough to enforce their will, whether the people like it or not?
There are a few cases of such attempts; but I confess I cannot find any which have been carried out on a great scale by governments of real political genius in ancient or modern times. Their wisdom has never been used to change the actual foundations of any great national system. The Romans were too clever to try such dangerous experiments. Alexander the Great had never done so; and the successors of Augustus, like the conqueror of Darius, were content to rule over a vast mosaic of nations, all of which clung to their own customs, habits, laws, and methods of government. So long as they and their fellow-subjects remained racially the same, they were controlled by their rulers only in matters of taxation and military defence.
There is, however, one point that must not be passed over. Many of the peoples subdued by the Romans had certain features in their codes so outrageous that their existence could not be tolerated by Roman sentiment; for example, the human sacrifices of the Druids, which were visited with the severest penalties. Well, the Romans, for all their power, never succeeded in completely stamping out these barbarous rites. In Narbonese Gaul the victory was easy, as the native population had been almost entirely replaced by Roman colonists. But in the centre, where the tribes were wilder, the resistance was more obstinate; and in the Breton Peninsula, where settlers from England in the fourth century brought back the ancient customs with the ancient blood, the people continued, from mere feelings of patriotism and love of tradition, to cut men’s throats on their altars as often as they dared. The strictest supervision did not succeed in taking the sacred knife and torch out of their hands. Every revolt began by restoring this terrible feature of the national cult; and Christianity, still panting with rage after its victory over an immoral polytheism, hurled itself with shuddering horror against the still more hideous superstitions of the Armorici. It destroyed them only after a long struggle; for as late as the seventeenth century shipwrecked sailors were massacred and wrecks plundered in all the parishes on the seaboard where the Cymric blood had kept its purity. These barbarous customs were in accordance with the irresistible instincts of a race which had not yet become sufficiently mixed, and so had seen no reason to change its ways.
It is, however, in modern times especially that we find examples of institutions imposed by a conqueror and not accepted by his subjects. Intolerance is one of the chief notes of European civilization. Conscious of its own power and greatness, it finds itself confronted either by different civilizations or by peoples in a state of barbarism. It treats both kinds with equal contempt; and as it sees obstacles to its own progress in everything that is different from itself, it is apt to demand a complete change in its subjects’ point of view. The Spaniards, however, the English, the Dutch, and even the French, did not venture to push their innovating tendencies too far, when the conquered peoples were at all considerable in number. In this they copied the moderation that was forced on the conquerors of antiquity. The East, and North and West Africa, show clear proof that the most enlightened nations cannot set up institutions unsuited to the character of their subjects. I have already mentioned that British India lives its ancient life, under its own immemorial laws. The Javanese have lost all political independence, but are very far from accepting any institutions like those of the Netherlands. They continue to live bound as they lived free; and since the sixteenth century, when Europe first turned her face towards the East, we cannot find the least trace of any moral influence exerted by her, even in the case of the peoples she has most completely conquered.
Not all these, however, have been so numerous as to force self-control on their European masters. In some cases the persuasive tongue has been backed by the stern argument of the sword. The order has gone forth to abolish existing customs, and put in their place others which the masters knew to be good and useful. Has the attempt ever succeeded?
America provides us with the richest field for gathering answers to this question. In the South, the Spaniards reigned without check, and to what end? They uprooted the ancient empires, but brought no light. They founded no race like themselves.
In the North the methods were different, but the results just as negative. In fact, they have been still more unfruitful, still more disastrous from the point of view of humanity. The Spanish Indians, are, at any rate, extremely prolific,[[18]] and have even transformed the blood of their conquerors, who have now dropped to their level. But the Redskins of the United States have withered at the touch of the Anglo-Saxon energy. The few who remain are growing less every day; and those few are as uncivilized, and as incapable of civilization, as their forefathers.
In Oceania, the facts point to the same conclusions; the natives are dying out everywhere. We sometimes manage to take away their arms, and prevent them from doing harm; but we do not change their nature. Wherever the European rules, they drink brandy instead of eating each other. This is the only new custom which our active minds have been quite successful in imposing; it does not mark a great step in advance.