There are in the world two Governments formed on European models by peoples different from us in race; one in the Sandwich Islands, the other at San Domingo. A short sketch of these two Governments will be enough to show the impotence of all attempts to set up institutions which are not suggested by the national character.
In the Sandwich Islands the representative system is to be seen in all its majesty. There is a House of Lords, a House of Commons, an executive Ministry, a reigning King; nothing is wanting. But all this is mere ornament. The real motive power that keeps the machine going is a body of Protestant missionaries. Without them, King, Lords, and Commons would not know which way to turn, and would soon cease to turn at all. To the missionaries alone belongs the credit of furnishing the ideas, of putting them into a palatable form, and imposing them on the people; they do this either by the influence they exert on their neophytes, or, in the last resort, by threats. Even so, I rather think that if the missionaries had nothing but King and Parliament to work with, they might struggle for a time with the stupidity of their scholars, but would be forced in the end to take themselves a large and prominent part in the management of affairs. This would show their hand too obviously; and so they avoid it by appointing a ministry that consists simply of men of European race. The whole business is thus a matter of agreement between the Protestant mission and its nominees; the rest is merely for show.
As to the King, Kamehameha III, he appears to be a prince of considerable parts. He has given up tattooing his face, and although he has not yet converted all the courtiers to his views, he already experiences the well-earned satisfaction of seeing nothing on their faces and cheeks but chaste designs, traced in thin outline. The bulk of the nation, the landed nobility and the townspeople, cling, in this and other respects, to their old ideas. The European population of the Sandwich Islands is, however, swollen every day by new arrivals. There are many reasons for this. The short distance separating the Hawaiian Kingdom from California makes it a very interesting focus for the clear-sighted energy of the white race. Deserters from the whaling vessels or mutinous sailors are not the only colonists; merchants, speculators, adventurers of all kinds, flock to the islands, build houses, and settle down. The native race is gradually tending to mix with the invaders and disappear. I am not sure that the present representative and independent system of administration will not soon give place to an ordinary government of delegates, controlled by some great power. But of this I am certain, that the institutions that are brought in will end by establishing themselves firmly, and the first day of their triumph will necessarily be the last for the natives.
At San Domingo the independence is complete. There are no missionaries to exert a veiled and absolute power, no foreign ministry to carry out European ideas; everything is left to the inspiration of the people itself. Its Spanish part consists of mulattoes, of whom I need say nothing. They seem to imitate, well or badly, all that is most easily grasped in our civilization. They tend, like all hybrids, to identify themselves with the more creditable of the races to which they belong. Thus they are capable, to a certain extent, of reproducing our customs. It is not among them that we must study the question in its essence. Let us cross the mountains that separate the Republic of San Domingo from the State of Hayti.
We find a society of which the institutions are not only parallel to our own, but are derived from the latest pronouncements of our political wisdom. All that the most enlightened liberalism has proclaimed for the last sixty years in the deliberative assemblies of Europe, all that has been written by the most enthusiastic champions of man’s dignity and independence, all the declarations of rights and principles—these have all found their echo on the banks of the Artibonite. Nothing African has remained in the statute law. All memories of the land of Ham have been officially expunged from men’s minds. The State language has never shown a trace of African influence. The institutions, as I said before, are completely European. Let us consider how they harmonize with the manners of the people.
We are in a different world at once. The manners are as depraved, brutal, and savage as in Dahomey or among the Fellatahs.[[19]] There is the same barbaric love of finery coupled with the same indifference to form. Beauty consists in colour, and so long as a garment is of flaming red and edged with tinsel, the owner does not trouble about its being largely in holes. The question of cleanliness never enters anyone’s head. If you wish to approach a high official in this country, you find yourself being introduced to a gigantic negro lying on his back, on a wooden bench. His head is enveloped in a torn and dirty handkerchief, surmounted by a cocked hat, all over gold lace. An immense sword hangs from his shapeless body. His embroidered coat lacks the final perfection of a waistcoat. Our general’s feet are cased in carpet slippers. Do you wish to question him, to penetrate his mind, and learn the nature of the ideas he is revolving there? You will find him as uncultured as a savage, and his bestial self-satisfaction is only equalled by his profound and incurable laziness. If he deigns to open his mouth, he will roll you out all the commonplaces which the newspapers have been inflicting on us for the last half-century. The barbarian knows them all by heart. He has other interests, of course, and very different interests; but no other ideas. He speaks like Baron Holbach, argues like Monsieur de Grimm, and has ultimately no serious preoccupation except chewing tobacco, drinking alcohol, disembowelling his enemies, and conciliating his sorcerers. The rest of the time he sleeps.
The State is divided among two factions. These are separated from each other by a certain incompatibility, not of political theory, but of skin. The mulattoes are on one side, the negroes on the other. The former have certainly more intelligence and are more open to ideas. As I have already remarked in the case of San Domingo, the European blood has modified the African character. If these men were set in the midst of a large white population, and so had good models constantly before their eyes, they might become quite useful citizens. Unfortunately the negroes are for the time being superior in strength and numbers. Although their racial memory of Africa has its origin, in many cases, as far back as their grandfathers, they are still completely under the sway of African ideals. Their greatest pleasure is idleness; their most cogent argument is murder. The most intense hatred has always existed between the two parties in the island. The history of Hayti, of democratic Hayti, is merely a long series of massacres; massacres of mulattoes by negroes, or of negroes by mulattoes, according as the one or the other held the reins of power. The constitution, however enlightened it may pretend to be, has no influence whatever. It sleeps harmlessly upon the paper on which it is written. The power that reigns unchecked is the true spirit of these peoples. According to the natural law already mentioned, the black race, belonging as it does to a branch of the human family that is incapable of civilization, cherishes the deepest feelings of repulsion towards all the others. Thus we see the negroes of Hayti violently driving out the whites and forbidding them to enter their territory. They would like to exclude even the mulattoes; and they aim at their extermination. Hatred of the foreigner is the mainspring of local politics. Owing, further, to the innate laziness of the race, agriculture is abolished, industry is not even mentioned, commerce becomes less every day. The hideous increase of misery prevents the growth of population, which is actually being diminished by the continual wars, revolts, and military executions. The inevitable result is not far off. A country of which the fertility and natural resources used to enrich generation after generation of planters will become a desert; and the wild goat will roam alone over the fruitful plains, the magnificent valleys, the sublime mountains, of the Queen of the Antilles.[[20]]
Let us suppose for a moment that the peoples of this unhappy island could manage to live in accordance with the spirit of their several races. In such a case they would not be influenced, and so (of course) overshadowed by foreign theories, but would found their society in free obedience to their own instincts. A separation between the two colours would take place, more or less spontaneously, though certainly not without some acts of violence.
The mulattoes would settle on the seaboard, in order to keep continually in touch with Europeans. This is their chief wish. Under European direction they would become merchants (and especially money-brokers), lawyers, and physicians. They would tighten the links with the higher elements of their race by a continual crossing of blood; they would be gradually improved and lose their African character in the same proportion as their African blood.
The negroes would withdraw to the interior and form small societies like those of the runaway slaves in San Domingo itself, in Martinique, Jamaica, and especially in Cuba, where the size of the country and the depth of the forests baffle all pursuit. Amid the varied and tropical vegetation of the Antilles, the American negro would find the necessities of life yielded him in abundance and without labour by the fruitful earth. He would return quite freely to the despotic, patriarchal system that is naturally suited to those of his brethren on whom the conquering Mussulmans of Africa have not yet laid their yoke. The love of isolation would be at once the cause and the result of his institutions. Tribes would be formed, and become, at the end of a short time, foreign and hostile to each other. Local wars would constitute the sole political history of the different cantons; and the island, though it would be wild, thinly peopled, and ill-cultivated, would yet maintain a double population. This is now condemned to disappear, owing to the fatal influence wielded by laws and institutions that have no relation to the mind of the negro, his interests, and his wants.