SANITARY STATISTICS
OF
NATIVE COLONIAL SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS.

BY FLOR­ENCE NIGH­TIN­GALE.

LONDON.

M.D.CCC.LXIII.

SANITARY STA­TIS­TICS OF NA­TIVE CO­LON­I­AL SCHOOLS AND HOS­PI­TALS.

IF it is said on reading this paper, There is nothing in it, I answer, That is why I wrote it, because there is nothing in it, in order that something might come out of nothing. It is to show that statistics, capable of affording complete practical results when wanted, have scarcely made a beginning in the colonies. It is to show that when the Colonial Office, with great labour and no little cost, has collected, and I, with the same, have reduced these materials, they are incapable of giving all the beneficial information expected. The material does not exist, or, if it does, it is in a very undeveloped state. Such as it is, I have tried to do the best I could with it. And this is the result.

Several years ago, before Sir George Grey returned to his government at the Cape, I had a conversation with him on a subject which had dwelt very much on his mind, viz., the gradual disappearance of the aboriginal races from the neighbourhood of civilized communities. One of the points raised in the discussion was the probable effect which European school usages and school education might exercise on the health of the children of parents and of races who had never hitherto been brought under education.

Colonial school returns.

It appeared of great importance to ascertain, if possible, the precise influence which school training exercised on the health of native children. And I applied to the Colonial Office for aid in carrying out such an inquiry. The Duke of Newcastle entered warmly into the subject, and offered at once to call for any information which might throw light on it. I had a simple school form prepared and printed, copies of which were sent by the Colonial Office to the Governors of the various colonies. Returns were made from a large number of schools, but as no information has been received from many more, I presume the school statistics did not afford the means of supplying the required information. {4}

I have received, through the Colonial Office, filled up returns from 143 schools, in Ceylon, Australia, Natal, West Coast of Africa, British North America, the results of which are given in the accompanying series of tables.

pp. [20] to 26.

Table A. gives the name and date of opening of each school, the numbers of years included in the Return, the average number of native children, their sexes and ages for quinquennial periods, together with the mortality for the period included in the return. The results of this table for all the colonial schools are given in the reduction Table A. a., which states the total average attendance for all the schools in each colony, together with the total deaths, arranged in quinquennial periods, so far as it could be done. This table merely gives the general numerical results; but as the periods vary considerably it has been necessary to reduce the data under one common denomination, to obtain the absolute annual rate of mortality. This has been done in the Tables B, C, D, E, F, which show the years of life and the mortality for each sex and age.

p. [26 ].

Table A. a. shows that the average attendance of all ages at these schools has been 7,485 boys, and 2,453 girls, making a total of 9,938 as the number of children on whom the rate of mortality has been obtained. A small proportion of these children, only 672 boys and 422 girls, were under 5 years of age. There were 3,546 (2,651 boys and 895 girls) between the ages of 5 and 10. Between the ages of 10 and 15 there were 3,268 children, viz., 2,288 boys, and 980 girls. At the age of 15 and upwards there were 1,391 boys, and only 156 girls, attending school.

The total deaths, for the various periods, on this school attendance were 451 boys and 132 girls, of all ages, besides 79 boys and 39 girls who are returned as leaving school annually to die at home. It is important to remark that, out of a total average school attendance of 9,938, only 235 boys and 82 girls are stated to leave school annually from ill-health.

pp. [27], 28.

The relative mortality of boys and girls attending these schools is shown by Tables B. to F.

The death rate, it will be observed, varies considerably in different colonies. It is least among the native children at Natal, where a little more than five males per 1,000 and three females per 1,000 die annually. The Ceylon schools give a death rate of 14 ¹⁄₂ per 1,000 per {5} annum for boys and about 3 per 1,000 per annum for girls. But, including deaths among children who leave school to die at home, this rate would be nearly doubled.

The Indian schools in Canada afford a total annual death rate of 12 ¹⁄₂ per 1,000 for both sexes; but the mortality of girls is nearly double that of boys.

The Sierra Leone schools afford a very high rate of mortality, viz., 20 per 1,000 for males, and 35 per 1,000 for females.

The Western Australian schools yield the highest death rate of any, nearly 35 per 1,000 for boys and 13 per 1,000 for girls.

These death rates are of course only approximations to the truth. But on any supposition they are very high.

It is important to compare these death rates with those of children of the same ages at home. But we have only the means of doing so for 5 years of age and onwards. The home rates are given in Table E., which shows that from 5 to 10 the total mortality of both sexes is 9·2 per 1,000 at home. From 10 to 15 it is 5·3 per 1,000. Above 15 the home mortality is 8·4 per 1,000. Making allowance for native children dying at home, we shall be within the truth in assuming the mortality of native children at school as double that of English children of the same ages.

Table G, p. [29].

The next point of the inquiry is to ascertain the nature of the fatal diseases. And here we find a remarkable difference in the returns from different colonies. Thus out of 190 deaths in the Sierra Leone schools, all except 8 are due to small pox, measles, and hooping cough, scarlet fever, and other forms of fever.

In the Ceylon schools these same diseases, with the addition of diarrhœa, dysentery, and cholera, give rise to 261 deaths out of a total mortality of 341. In contrast with this great prevalence of miasmatic diseases, the West Australian schools yield only 2 deaths from children’s epidemics, out of a total mortality of 9.

In the Natal schools three children died of miasmatic diseases out of a total mortality of 16, while in the Canadian schools there is only one miasmatic death out of a total mortality of 27.

The adult natives at many of the colonies are considered specially subject to tubercular diseases, more particularly consumption. This class of diseases is indeed supposed to be a main cause of the gradual decline and disappearance of uncivilized or semi-civilized races. {6}

The facts, as regards these colonial schools, are as follow:—

Amongst the Sierra Leone children there is only one death from consumption and one from scrofula reported out of a total of 190 deaths. In the West Australian schools two of the nine deaths arose from consumption. In the Natal schools there was one death from consumption and one from scrofula out of 16 deaths. But there died seven children of other chest diseases besides consumption. The Ceylon schools yielded seven deaths from consumption, five from other chest diseases, and one from scrofula, out of a total mortality of 341.

Table S, p.[47].

These figures, so far as they go, show comparatively little liability to consumptive diseases among children in these colonies. But there is a native training institution in South Australia, in which a very large proportion of the mortality is due to tubercular diseases. Scrofula, phthisis, and hæmoptysis are returned as having occasioned 69·6 per cent. of the total mortality in the institution, among males, and 61·9 per cent. among females. When we cross over to Canada we find that, out of a total mortality of 27, 16 deaths arose from consumption and five from scrofula. Indeed all the specified deaths arose from tubercular disease except one solitary death from fever.

I will next describe shortly the method of the school education, with its probable influence on the children’s health.

pp. [30] to 39.

The facts under this head are given in the form of notes to each school return. I have had them thrown together, for the sake of comparison, in Table H., the general results of which are as follow.

Many of the school houses are described in the returns as of bad construction, and ill situated for health, and the ventilation very insufficient. Some of them are unfavourably situated for free external ventilation, or their local position is damp and subject to malaria, the results of which, as well as the results of general defective sanitary condition in their vicinity are evidenced by the great prevalence of miasmatic diseases, such as fevers, diarrhœa, dysentery, and even cholera, among the children.

The period of tuition varies considerably, from two up to ten or more years. The school instruction is generally five; in a few cases, six days a week. At a few stations {7} nearly half the year is allowed for holidays. But generally the holidays are from two to six or eight weeks.

In most of the schools there seem to be no play hours on school days. When play hours are allowed these are from half an hour to two hours. At about a dozen schools only is there any out-door work combined with instruction. The largest amount of this work is given in the Natal and Canadian schools. Out of the whole number there are only nine schools at which there is any attempt made at combining the elements of physical education with the school instruction, and even where this is done the measure is partial and inefficient, being confined to a few exercises or simply to bathing. The obvious physiological necessity of engrafting civilized habits on uncivilized races gradually through the means of systematic physical training appears to be nowhere recognized, except at New Norcia (Benedictine) school, Western Australia, on the return from which there is the following very important statement:—Gymnastics are stated to be necessary to prevent sickness, and the reporter proceeds, “The idea of bringing savages from their wild state at once to an advanced civilization serves no other purpose than that of murdering them.” And the result of the out-door training practised at this school is said to have been hitherto successful “in preventing the destructive effects of this error.”

Appendix II. p. [62].

Confinement appears to be peculiarly injurious to the aborigines of South Australia, for the Governor states that he “almost always finds it necessary to release prisoners before the expiration of their sentences, as death is apt to ensue from any prolonged confinement.” Even partial confinement in schools, he thinks, injuriously affects the native constitution.

Another very important observation bearing on the necessity of careful consideration of habits is recorded on the return from one of the Natal schools. It might be supposed that one of the most obvious duties in bringing native children to school would be to clothe them, but nevertheless clothing an uncivilized child requires care.[†] In their natural state they expose themselves to torrents of rain which, runs off them, and they are easily warmed {8} and dried at the hut fire. But it is stated that, when clothed in flannel and jersey, they get chilled by the rain, and that pulmonary diseases ensue as a consequence.

[†] People have been asked to assist in making clothing for the Kaffir tribes whom missionaries were going out to address, that the feeling of decency might not be offended in addressing the naked.

The method of conducting colonial schools appears to be based on our home system, without reference to physical training or other local conditions affecting health. This fact, together with the high rate of mortality, is the most prominent result of our inquiry. And although there is not sufficient evidence to show to what extent the school education increases the mortality, there is strong reason to believe that it is a cause. By far the greater part of the mortality is the direct result of mitigable or preventible diseases.

In all the schools within or near the tropics the miasmatic class of diseases occasions most of the mortality at the earlier periods of life. A considerable proportion arises from small-pox, showing bad management of children, and that vaccination is either neglected or imperfectly performed. The other fatal diseases are mainly those which in this country are connected with bad drainage, deficient and bad water supply, overcrowding, and want of sufficient house accommodation and cleanliness. In the Canadian schools consumption and scrofula appear to occupy the place of miasmatic diseases. But there is nothing in the school education, as described in the returns, sufficient to account for their special prevalence in these schools. The causes must probably be looked for in the close foul atmosphere of the native dwellings in a climate where warmth is more likely to be sought by closing every opening capable of admitting fresh air than would be the case in warmer latitudes, together with exposure and other conditions depressing to the general health.

Although these returns show the necessity of making systematic physical training and bodily labour at useful occupations an element absolutely essential and never to be neglected in the training of uncivilized and half civilized children in civilized habits and trains of thought, there is nothing to show that education properly conducted tends to the destruction and disappearance of native tribes.

The general result may be summed up in the following words: “Educate by all means, but look carefully at the problem with which you have to deal, and above all things never forget that education everywhere, but more {9} especially with uncivilized tribes, must always include physical training and useful work.”

Colonial hospital returns.

Besides this statistical inquiry into the condition of schools, I had forms prepared for colonial hospitals into which natives are received for treatment, in order to compare the school diseases with those prevailing among the adult population. They were sent to the colonies, also by the great kindness of the Duke of Newcastle. And returns have been received from the following hospitals:—Free Town, Sierra Leone, Cape Coast, Natal, Mauritius, Colombo and Malabar, King William’s Town, Kaffraria, and from two native hospitals in Canada.

pp. [40] to 53.

These returns were applied for as affording the only means of arriving at a knowledge of the prevailing classes of diseases among natives and of the relative mortality from each class. Abstracts of the returns, showing the mortality on the admissions for different sexes and ages, and the relative per-centages of mortality from each disease, are appended. (Forms I. to Y.) Of course the results can be relied on only so far as they represent the proportions admitted and dead from each disease, taken on numbers often hardly sufficiently large for statistical purposes. On account of the smallness of these numbers, I consider the results as only approximations, which I give because there is nothing better to be had. The tables do not enable us to ascertain directly the state of health or rate of mortality of the native population; but they afford us in an indirect manner a considerable amount of important information as to the diseases from which natives suffer. The hospital statistics appear to be very much in the same unsatisfactory condition as they are in many of our home hospitals. With these reservations the mortality statistics of these hospitals show a very high death rate upon the numbers treated.

Table L, p. [41].

Thus, in Free Town Hospital, the mortality to admissions among males is upwards of 20 per cent., and among females 18·6 per cent. of the admissions.[†]

[†] The admissions are obtained by adding the deaths to the recoveries, in the absence of more definite information.

Table T, p. [48].

At the Civil Hospital, Port Louis, Mauritius, the mortality is 21·3 per cent. for males, and 38·8 per cent. for females. {10}

Table V, p. [50].

In the Ceylon hospitals it is 20·7 per cent. for males, and 18·1 per cent. for females.

Table P, p. [44].

At Natal the mortality is much lower, being 12·8 per cent. for males and 6·6 per cent. for females.

Table N, p. [43].

In Kaffraria the mortality for males and females is 21·8 per cent.

Table X, p. [52].

In the Canadian hospitals it is 12·3 per cent. for males and 14 per cent. for females.

These high death rates can be attributed only to one or more of the following causes:—Defective stamina in the population, delay in applying for medical relief, bad and insufficient hospital accommodation, or defective medical treatment and management of the sick. The exact influence of each of these elements could hardly be appreciated without local inquiry. But the tables enable us to obtain some insight into the matter.

Table M, p. [42].

We find, e. g., that in the tropical districts the miasmatic class of diseases occasions a large proportion of the mortality, e. g., at Sierra Leone 20·4 per cent. of the total mortality among males and 6·8 per cent. of that among females is due to small-pox; that 34 per cent. of the mortality among females is due to dysentery; and that 19 per cent. of the mortality among males is due to periodic fevers. The mortality from miasmatic disease in this hospital is no less than 43·9 per cent. of the total mortality among men, and 43·1 per cent. of the total mortality among women.

Table K, p.[40].

At Cape Coast Hospital the admissions from miasmatic diseases, at least those recorded, amounted only to 9 ¹⁄₂ per cent. of the total admissions, and no deaths are attributed to this class of diseases. This is quite sufficient to show the imperfection of the hospital records at this station.

Table U, p. [49].

At Port Louis Hospital, Mauritius, the miasmatic deaths from dysentery, diarrhœa, cholera, continued fevers, and rheumatism amounted to 54·9 per cent. of the total mortality for men, and 47·9 per cent. of the total female mortality.

Table W, p. [51].

Dysentery appears to be particularly severe and fatal amongst the natives in Ceylon, for the returns show that 43·6 per cent. of the men’s mortality and 30·1 per cent. of the women’s were due to this one disease. The miasmatic class generally gave rise in these hospitals to 64·3 per cent. of the total deaths of men, and 60·1 per cent. of those of women. {11}

Table Q, p. [45].

In D’Urban Hospital and Grey’s Hospital, Natal, 41·1 per cent. of the men’s mortality arose from continued fever, and 6 per cent. from dysentery. This latter disease occasioned all the deaths in hospital among women. These two diseases are the only ones of the miasmatic class which proved fatal.

Table O, p. [43].

Miasmatic diseases appear to be rare among the native patients at King William’s Town, Kaffraria. Only one of them, dysentery, produced a fatal result, and it gave rise to no more than 6 per cent. of the total deaths of men and women conjointly.

Table Y, p. [53].

The same diseases appear to be rare also in the Canadian hospitals, where they occasioned 12·3 per cent. of the men’s mortality and 17·3 per cent. of the women’s. The prevailing types were diarrhœa, periodic fevers, and rheumatism.

Table M.

If we take the other points of comparison, supplied by tubercular diseases, we find a remarkable difference in the proportion of mortality in different colonies. Thus, the death rate from scrofula, phthisis, and hæmoptysis, at Free Town, Sierra Leone, amounts to 3·2 per cent. of the total deaths from all causes among men, and 2·3 per cent. among women. In this hospital other chest diseases give rise to a mortality of 2·4 per cent. for men.

Table K.

At Cape Coast Hospital no deaths are registered from any class of tubercular or chest affections.

Table Q.

At D’Urban Hospital and Grey’s Hospital, Natal, there was a similar absence of mortality from these diseases.

Table W, p. [51].

The Ceylon hospitals afforded also only a small mortality, 0·7 per cent. for men, and 1·1 per cent. for women. There was, however, a mortality of 1·3 per cent. for other chest diseases, among men, and 1·7 per cent. among women. In striking contrast with this comparative exemption from a class of diseases to which the disappearance of the native races has been to a large extent attributed, we find a very considerable increase in the other hospitals.

Table U.

At Mauritius the mortality from scrofula, phthisis, and hæmoptysis, was 8·7 per cent. of the total mortality among men, and 3·7 per cent. among women. Other chest diseases furnish a mortality of 3·6 and 1·8 per cent. among men and women respectively.

Table O.

At King William’s Town Hospital, Kaffraria, the mortality from tubercular diseases, for men and women {12} conjointly, was no less than 70·6 per cent. of the total deaths, and from chest diseases 11·7 per cent.

Table Y.

Both classes of disease afford a high death rate in the Canadian hospitals. For the tubercular forms this amounts to 44·9 per cent. for men, and 41·3 per cent. for women. The other chest diseases give rise to 30·6 per cent. of the total hospital mortality for men, and 24·4 per cent. for women. Three-fourths of the whole hospital mortality among men, and two-thirds among women, were thus due to some form or other of chest disease.

Much has been said and written on the pernicious effects of the use of intoxicating liquors by uncivilized races. Diseases of the brain and nervous system, and liver diseases, are those which, at home, are generally supposed to indicate the greater or less prevalence of habits of intoxication among the people. Let us inquire to what extent admissions and deaths from these classes prevail in the various colonies.

Table M.

At Sierra Leone brain and nervous diseases occasion 5·7 per cent. of the total admissions, and 12·7 per cent. of the total deaths among men, and 9·2 per cent. of the admissions, with 21·6 per cent. of the deaths, among women. Liver diseases afford only 0·1 per cent. of the admissions, and no deaths.

Table K.

Cape Coast Hospital affords an extraordinary contrast to this, for there we find that, although brain and nervous diseases and liver diseases occasion no more than 4·8 per cent., and 2·4 per cent., respectively, of the admissions, all the deaths arose from them.

Table Q.

The Natal hospitals show a proportion of admissions from brain and nervous diseases, of 5·7 per cent. of men, and 8·3 per cent. of women. But no deaths and no admissions from liver disease.

Table O.

The King William’s Town Hospitals, Kaffraria, show no admissions from either class.

Table U.

At Mauritius the admissions from brain and nervous diseases were 3·5 per cent. for men, and 2·7 per cent. for women, and the deaths 6·1 per cent. for men, and 1·9 per cent. for women. Liver disease is so rare as to be scarcely appreciable.

Table W.

A similar remark applies to the infrequency of liver disease in the Ceylon hospitals. In these hospitals, the admissions from brain and nervous diseases are 1·6 per cent. for men, and 3·2 per cent. for women. And the deaths 1·5 per cent. and 3·1 per cent. respectively. {13}

Table Y.

No liver diseases were admitted into the Canadian hospitals. And the brain and nervous diseases afforded 6·5 per cent. admissions, and 2 per cent. deaths for men, with 5·2 per cent. admissions and no deaths for women.

Results.

These are the statistical results of this inquiry. To the extent to which the data are imperfect, the results are of course unreliable. The numbers are often much smaller than are required for such purposes. I have used them because the best obtainable, even with the assistance of the colonial governments; and the first lesson they teach is the necessity for assimilating the colonial registration and vital statistics to those at home. But, with all their defects, when these statistics are examined, they bring clearly into light certain great general facts.

As regards the schools, they show us that the educational idea in the colonies is just as deficient as it is at home, and that it is attended with worse physical consequences.

No account appears to be taken of the past history of the races on whom it is desired to confer the inestimable blessings of Christian civilization. Our teachers go among them just as they would into English villages. They collect the children who, together with their ancestors, have spent most of their existence in active out-door habits, into all classes of structures, good, bad, and indifferent, apparently without regard to the effect of local conditions on their health. In all probability the children are set together as close as they are placed in one of our Home “Model Schools,” without any reference to children’s epidemics or other fevers. This is not done without great risk, even with children of English birth. But to do this with children taken from their open air habits in uncivilized or semi-civilized communities is to incur the immediate danger of losing the most hopeful pupils by diseases, which, under a more rational system, might in all probability be avoided.

The education appears to be confined simply to head-work, and no provision is made for sustaining the health by physical training, while it is in danger of exhaustion by a cerebral stimulus, perhaps applied for the first time in the history of the family from which the child has sprung. It is true that cerebral disease forms only a small part of the school mortality; but the diseases from which the mortality proceeds in the tropical schools are {14} the result of overcrowding, defective ventilation, and other local sanitary evils, all of which are augmented by sedentary occupation.

The remedy for this is obviously to improve the school-houses, to give more attention to space, to ventilation, and to the locality where the school is placed, and above all to make physical training an essential and important part of the school system, never forgetting that the habits of generations cannot be suddenly broken through without danger to health and life.

In as far as concerns the effect of the schools on the disappearance of native races, the returns contain no appreciable evidence. Education, if properly conducted, together with the improved personal, physical, and moral habits consequent on it, ought everywhere to be conservative and not destructive; but to be so it should be conducted, as already stated, with a full knowledge of the physiological effects of altered habits and the influence of these on health.

The hospital returns, so far as they can be relied on, show in the tropical colonies a large mortality from diseases arising from bad drainage, bad water, imperfect agriculture, want of cleanliness, and from other bad habits. Bad, overcrowded, unventilated dwellings must also in these colonies, as at home, bear their proportion of the blame. Thus mortality arising from mitigable or preventible causes of an external nature occasions in all the colonies by far the greatest part of the death rate in hospitals. Incivilization with its inherent diseases, when brought into contact with civilization without adopting specific precautions for preserving health, will always carry with it a large increase of mortality on account of the greater susceptibility of its subjects to those causes of disease which can to a certain extent be endured without as great a risk by civilized communities born among them.

The hospital returns throw little light on the causes of the disappearance of native races, unless these are to be found in the great prevalence of tubercular and chest diseases in certain of the colonies. This is especially remarkable in the returns from Australia, Kaffraria, and Canada. But why this class of affections should be so much more prevalent in the temperate than in the tropical colonies could only be ascertained by careful local inquiry. One thing is certain that, in those colonies from which complaints of the disappearance of native races have come, {15} tubercular and chest diseases appear to occasion the largest amount of hospital mortality.

The discovery of the causes of this must be referred back to the colonies. Anything which exhausts the constitution; above all things, foul air during sleep, will engender these diseases. Open locality, healthy winds, active daily occupation, are by themselves no safeguards, if the nights be spent in unventilated cabins. The Alpine climates of Europe are known to be the most free of any climates from this tribe of diseases. But even on their healthy mountain slopes scrofula in all its forms prevails among the peasants, engaged during summer on the high pastures, when they pass their nights in the close unhealthy chalets there.

It is possible that a tubercular taint so engendered may be the cause of the whole evil, and it is to this point that the inquiry has brought us.

Appended to the school and hospital returns from each colony, there are very interesting notes, giving generally the impression of the reporters on the nature and causes of disease among the aboriginal population. These notes, the chief portions of which I have appended, confirm the statistical evidence; but they afford little additional light on the causation.

The decaying races are chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and perhaps in certain parts of South Africa. They appear to consist chiefly of tribes which have never been civilized enough or had force of character enough to form fixed settlements or to build towns. Such tribes have few fixed habits or none. But the papers show that they are naturally, in their uncivilized condition, possessed of far stronger stamina, and that they resist the effects of frightful wounds and injuries far better than civilized men. This latter fact tells strongly against any natural proclivity to diseased action. But we nevertheless see that when they come in contact with civilized men, and are, as a necessary consequence, obliged to conform themselves to a certain extent to the vices and customs of their civilized (!) neighbours, they perish from disease.

Appendix II., pp. [62]–3.

The evidence contained in these notes unfortunately proves that the pioneers of British civilization are not always the best of the British people. Many of them, it is to be feared, leave their own country, stained with vice and vicious habits, ready for any act of oppression, ready {16} to take any advantage of the simplicity of the poor aborigines. Such people have introduced everywhere the use of intoxicating drinks, together with the diseases as well as the vices of their own depraved standard of civilization. Where the races are found most rapidly decaying, there the married women are found living in a state of prostitution and exposed to its diseases. And we know where such is the case, decline and extinction are inevitable.

This appears to be a main cause of the falling off in births; while the other evil habits introduced by Europeans destroy the stamina of the adult population and raise its rate of mortality. With the facts before us, imperfect as they are, we need feel no surprise at the gradual extinction of these unhappy races. But we should draw from them an argument for doing all that can be done to lessen these evils, and to remove, as far as practicable, any causes of disease and death which it may be in our power to remove.

Complaint of such things, in some form or other, runs through the whole of the evidence regarding these aboriginal populations, who appear to be far more susceptible of the operation of causes of disease arising out of imperfect civilization, than are civilized[†] men; how much more so must they be to such dreadful causes as those indicated above!

[†] Meaning by “civilized,” men who can live together in a city or village without cutting each other’s throats.

There is a strong presumption that, if aboriginal races are left undisturbed in their own country to follow their own customs and even their own vices, they will continue to exist as they have hitherto done, in a slowly increasing or stationary condition. But there is no reason to doubt the evidence contained in these papers that certain races require very little disturbance in their primeval habits to pass into a state of decline.

The great question at issue is, how this is to be arrested.

The facts appear to point to such remedial measures as the following:—

• 1. That provision of land should be made for the exclusive use of the existing tribes; but this, by itself, would be simply preserving their barbarism for the sake of preserving their lives. And the question naturally occurs whether Moravian settlements or settlements conducted on entirely similar principles, under whatever Christian {17} denomination, might not be introduced for the purpose of wisely and gradually winning the people to higher and better habits.
• 2. A good government which really understood its responsibilities would put down with any force requisite that most accursed of all British habits, the sale of intoxicating drinks to those who never knew them before. On the heads of these traffickers rests the blood of thousands of their fellow men.
• 3. Although a large proportion of children have died while under school instruction, there is no proof that education, if properly conducted, tends to extinguish races. And it is possible that by educating outcast native children, these tribes, with whatever mental constitution endowed, may be spared to contribute their quota to human knowledge and advancement.
• 4. The school diseases, however, indicate that education should be conducted in a very different manner from what it is in England. Physiology would teach us that it is not safe to take the child of uncivilized parents, and to submit it all at once to the restraints of civilization. What is wanted is a careful study of what can and what cannot be done with safety. Time would seem to be a great element in the education of these children. There should be as little interference as possible with their born habits and customs. And that interference should take place gradually and wisely. The probability is that if children could leave school in health, with sufficient training to enable them to enter the pale of civilization, their children would be the more able to bear the required development of the mental faculties. In any case, physical training, and a large amount of out-door work, are essentially necessary to success.
• 5. We all know how difficult it is to preserve health among dense populations in our houses at home. We may hence infer how much more difficult it is to draw together numbers of uncivilized or partially civilized people, within the same boundary, or under the same roof, without great risk to health and life. Bring a healthy family from the open country into a narrow crowded London alley, and the little ones will die, the elder ones will be sick for, perhaps, the first time of their lives, and the parents will fall into confirmed ill health, to say the least of it.

Our home experience hence teaches us the extreme importance of favourable sanitary conditions, whenever an {18} attempt is made to bring the uncivilized within the pale of civilization.

Every society which has been formed has had to sacrifice large proportions of its earlier generations to the new conditions of life arising out of the mere fact of change. Only by the greatest care and by the adoption of every requisite improvement can London itself bear the rapid increase of its population without danger from pestilence.

This destroying principle is now at work in the colonies where races are decaying. And its results can only be diminished by assimilating the new conditions, involved in the change, as nearly as possible, so far as healthiness is concerned, to the open air activity to which the people have been for generations accustomed.

These are the results of this inquiry. Defective in many particulars though they be, they are still sufficient to prove that, on the local authorities of the colonies, there rests a responsibility in the face of public opinion in Europe, of the very gravest kind. It is a matter for state interference. It is impossible to stand by, while races are disappearing, of whom it can be said that the “Australian is the finest model of the human proportions in muscular development,” that his “head might compare with an antique bust of a philosopher,” that his “perceptive faculties are peculiarly acute,” that he is an “apt learner,” and “possesses the most intense desire to imitate his more civilized brethren in almost every thing;” that the Australian aborigines are “possessed of mental power on a par with their brethren of the other races of man; that they are perhaps superior to the Negro and some of the more inferior divisions of the great human family;” that they have “keen perceptive faculties, with a considerable deficiency in their reflective faculties, and a certain want of steadiness of purpose in their characters which appears the great obstacle to be overcome in reclaiming them and bringing them within the pale of civilization and Christianity.”

These statements are from a report on the subject, made by a select committee of the Legislative Council of Victoria in 1858–9. In this report occurs the following passage, with which I conclude on account of its authority, appealing from its facts to the better feeling of the colonies, with the hope that the time is not far off when such a stigma as it affixes to the empire may be wiped away.

“The great and almost unprecedented reduction in the {19} number of the Aborigines is to be attributed to the general occupation of the country by the white population; to vices acquired by contact with a civilized race, more particularly the indulgence in ardent spirits; and hunger, in consequence of the scarcity of game since the settlement of the colony; and, also in some cases, to cruelty and ill-treatment. The great cause, however, is apparently the inveterate propensity of the race to excessive indulgence in spirits, which it seems utterly impossible to eradicate. This vice is not only fatal, but leads to other causes which tend to shorten life.

“Mr. Thomas, the guardian of Aborigines, states in evidence, that one morning he found five drunken blacks lying buried in the mud at the Merri Creek, which being followed by pulmonary attack, death, as is invariably the case, ensued. It may be remarked, that consumption forms a fruitful cause of mortality amongst them, in addition to the other causes enumerated.

“It would appear that they have materially degenerated since the advent of the whites, as Mr. Thomas has said ‘the young die two to one in proportion to the old; I have some old people yet.’ The rapid settlement necessary upon the country being occupied by flocks and herds was more unfavourable to the Aborigines than if it had only been gradually taken up for agricultural purposes.

“Your Committee are of opinion that great injustice has been perpetrated upon the Aborigines—that, when the Government of the colony found it necessary to take from them their hunting grounds and their means of living, proper provision should have been made for them. Had they been a strong race, like the New Zealanders, they would have forced the new occupiers of their country to provide for them; but being weak and ignorant, even for savages, they have been treated with almost utter neglect.

“With the exception of the Protectorate, which was an emanation of the Imperial Government, and which seemed to have been only partially successful, little or nothing has been done for the black denizens of the country.”

Every colony where the native races are declining could furnish some such report as this. The injustice has been a common one, and so should be the remedy. {20}

APPENDIX I. TABLES showing the MORTALITY and CAUSES of MORTALITY among ABORIGINES in COLONIAL SCHOOLS and COLONIAL HOSPITALS.

TABLE A.—ATTENDANCE and MORTALITY at COLONIAL NATIVE SCHOOLS.

TABLE A. a.—Summary of Table A.

G. TABLE showing the CHIEF CAUSES of MORTALITY at the SCHOOLS in each COLONY.

H. EDUCATION AND STATE OF SCHOOLS IN THE DIFFERENT COLONIES.