FRENCH COLONIZATION OF ALGERIA.
THREE pamphlets recently put forth by M. Boudin* establish some curious conclusions against the practicability of ever really settling a French power in Algeria. M. Boudin has attained his eminence as Chief Physician to the Army of the Alps, and a leading authority in military medicine, solely by his great and striking abilities ; for he has encountered and overborne no small amount of persecution from those whose opinions he controverted. One instance may be cited. Some years since, he was one of the managers of the Hospital at Toulon, and after interesting experi- ments on the effects of arsenic, he introduced an arsenical treat- ment of the marsh fever under which the soldiers from Algeria suffered. The faculty at Paris made a great outcry ; the Minis- ter was besieged with remonstrances ; M. Boudin was stopped in his treatment, and threatened with a judicial inquiry. But he had succeeded: the Government protected him ; he was suffered to proceed ; and his method was soon afterwards professionally recognized. By favour of the promotion which ability commands in the public service of France, he has risen rapidly in his pro- fession. His pamphlets comprise a number of statistical details to show that Algeria is unfitted by its climate for European, and especially for French residents ; that they do not become inured to the climate by long residence; and that they cannot obtain from the soil an adequate subsistence. Less consciously, he also indicates some further conclusions not without interest to the English colonizationist.
His statistics of mortality are painfully conclusive. He turns
the comparison in every possible way, showing that French life cannot stand the struggle with the climate ; but in this place a few leading facts will suffice to indicate his results. In France, the mortality in the French population, in 1845, was 23.6 per thousand ; in Algeria, the mortality of the French population, ex- clusively of deaths by war and of invalids returned to die at home, was 62.5 per thousand. The deaths among the French in Al- geria exceed the births—in 1845 they were respectively 6,689 and 3,018. Yet that is not because the ordinary increase of the popu- lation is less in Algeria—the marriages in that colony are 17 per thousand ; in France, 8.15; and the births are not in a less ratio— in France 28.3, in Algeria (among the French) 36.6. Settlements at Fondouck, Toumiettes, and El-Arouch, have been abandoned from the sheer impossibility of sustaining the frightful mortality. The nett annual decrease of the resident European population is 17.2 per thousand, of the French population 25.9.
On the subject of agriculture the results are less easily ex-
tracted from the text. Suffice it to say, that the alternation of a broiling sun and inundating rains limits the period of field-work for Europeans to two months in the year. The inevitable expen- ses are excessive ; and the produce is insufficient to support the cultivator ; who must eke it out with imports—paid for with what ? Even Marshal Bugeaud has declared that the agricultu- rist "had much better stop metayer in France."
M. Boudin, however, illustrates a negative proposition wider
than be thinks. The decrease of the population has been ac- counted for by the large proportion of single men in the colony; but, observes M. Boudin, with a logical naïveté, marriage is not necessary to an increase of the population ; and he makes good the remark by the statistics of the very case in point. We will not go beyond the strictly statistical and scientific view which M. Boudin takes ; but it is to be observed, that in a colony emanat- ing from a country where marriage is the customary social insti- tution, the means for preserving and rearing children will to a great extent accord with the number of married couples : so that a permanent increase to the population such as that hinted by M. Boudin could in no respect be counted upon in Algeria, independ- ently of the morbific obstacles. M. Vialard mentions a case in Which it cost 1,000,000 francs to settle a hundred families ; an outlay exceeding anything ever attempted in our own great colo- nizing country. The exports of French Algeria have been—the horns of the cattle consumed by the army, and the empty bottles sent back! Such are incidents of the last great a+ tempt which France has made in colonization. The student of that neglected art will find many examples of the causes of failure in the history of French Algeria.
• Lehrer
ear l'Algerie (Premiere Lettre.) Par M. Bondin, Medecin en Chef de
l'Armere des Apes.
Leltres sur PAigerle (Seconde Lettre.) Par M. Bondin, Medecin en Chef de l'Armee des Alper. Etudes de Physiologie et de Pathologic Comparees de Races Romaine,. Par M. Bondi; hiedecin en Chef de l'Armee des Alper.
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