GREATER BRITAIN.
"IF two small islands," writes Mr. Dilke, "are by courtesy styled Great, 'America, Australia, India must form a Greater Britain." These words not only justify the author's title, but explain the extent and purpose of his work. It is passing hard to write a book of travels which shall be fresh and readable about countries with which every one is more or less familiar, but Mr. Dilke has done this, and something better. Ills volumes have the advantage of a manly style and of a distinct aim. He describes with picturesque felicity, and often with considerable humour, the objects that he sees, and at the same time discusses with great ability a number of subjects, political, social, religious, which are likely to affect the future destiny of the English family. The book is, therefore, eminently suggestive. It is as full of thoughts as of facts, and if the views expressed in it are sometimes extreme, it will be found that from the author's standing-point they are reasonable enough.
An Englishman is not unwilling to be told of the greatness of his race, and of the rapidity with which men of his blood are sub- duing and replenishing the earth. The inhabitants of these small islands are the greatest colonists the world ever saw. It may be almost said that wherever we settle we succeed, that whatever we attempt we accomplish, and the English-speaking race already owns an empire "five times as great as that of Darius, and four and a half times as large as the Roman Empire at its greatest extent." "The extensions of the United States alone," says Mr. Dilke, "are equal to il those of Russia. Chili, La Plata, and Peru must eventually become English ; the Red Indian race that now occupies those countries cannot stand against our colonists ; and the future of the tablelands of Africa and that of Japan and of China is as clear. Even in the tropical plains the negroes alone seem able to withstand us. No possible series of events can prevent the English race itself in 1970 numbering 300 millions of beings—of one national character and of one tongue. Italy, Spain, France, Russia become pigmies by the side of such a people."
The disappearance of the feebler rapes, however much to be deplored, is apparently inevitable. Railways, cities, and com- merce drive the Red Indian from his hunting-fields and the Maori frOnt his pah. While we write news arrives that every available soldier in the Atlantic States has been sent to the West to engage in Indian fighting, and in New Zealand the war between natives and
Create,. Britain: a Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries during 1855 and 1867. By Charles Wentworth Dilke. 2 ve13., with awl Illustrations. London: Macmillan and Co: 1868.
colonists still drags its slow length along. The Maories, a noble race, acknowledge that they have no chance of resisting the pro- gress of the Pakeha. Strange as it seems, every native product fails before the importations of the colonists. The English fly, " the best possible fly of the whole world," drives out the Maori fly ; the English flea thrives wonderfully, English pheasants swarm in every jungle, English cereals and grasses supersede the native growths. "Can you stay the surf which beats on Wanganui shore ?" say the Maories of our progress ; and of themselves, "We are gone like the moa." It must be remembered, however, that the Maories were dying out before an Englishman settled on their shores, and Mr. Mike remarks that the universal unchastity of the unmarried women, Christian as well as heathen, "would be suffi- cient to destroy a race of gods." He believes, and we believe it too, that since the original annexation of the isles we have done the Maories no serious wrong.
The progress of the English people is not without its drawbacks. It is more than possible that in the process of acclimatization the original type of the race may be lost. Mr. Dunce remarks that American settlers acquire after a length of time the features of Red Indians ; that the children of Irish parents, born in America, are physically not Irish, but Americans ; and that already there is a change of type also in South Australia, where the men somewhat resemble the Pitcairn Islanders, while the women are all alike,— small, pretty, and bright, but with a burnt-up look. It would seem that in California alone, a comparatively temperate climate, the English retain the Old-World type. "At a San Franciscan ball you see English faces, not American. Even the lean Western men and hungry Yankees become plump and rosy in this temple of the winds."
In the United States the change of character is perhaps more striking than that of features, and the evil effects of hotel life in the large cities are noted by most travellers. To this cause may pro- bably be attributed in some measure the aversion of American wives to become mothers, as well as the forwardness and independence of American children. "The only one of the common charges," says Mr. Dilke, "brought against America in English society and in English books and papers that is thoroughly true, is the state- ment that American children as a rule are forward, ill-mannered, and immoral. Au American can scarcely be found who does not admit and deplore the facts. 1Vith the self-exposing honesty that is a characteristic of their nation, American gentlemen will talk by the hour of the terrible profligacy of the young New Yorkers. Boys, they tell you, who in England would he safe in lower school at Eton or in well-managed houses, in New York or New Orleans are deep gamesters and God-defying rowdies."
Doubtless, the neglect of early discipline thus evinced is owing also in large measure to the physical feebleness of women in the States. There can be no judieious control in the family where there is a lack of vital energy, and unruly children are generally the offspring of fragile, dyspeptic mothers. In this country it is often said, and with truth, that at our public schools and Univer- sities we make a business of our sport, and that men arc tempted to care more for the honour of being firstrate cricketers or rowers than for academical distinctions. Physical development is assuredly not the end of education, but it is an essential part of it, and, on the whole, we prefer the excess of England to the almost total abstinence of America. If, by the way, University life in the new country differs in one respect widely from our own, it occasionally resembles it in the conservative character of its institutions. At Harvard, according to Mr. Dilke, academic abuses flourish as luxuriantly as on English soil, and ancient customs, some of which would be more honoured in the breach than the observance, are still reverently maintained. Michigan, on the contrary, is "probably the most democratic school in the whole world," and among other wants, or what we in England must regard as wants, is the absence of competition. The Governtnent of the University by men who are neither members nor professors is but one point among many in which Michigan strikingly differs from the elder universities. The University course designed for those who have already taken the bachelor's degree "ranges over philology, philo-
sophy, art, and science ; there is a branch of one of arts of design, one of fine arts.' Astronomy, ethics, and Oriental languages are all embraced in a scheme brought into working order within ten years of the time when Michigan was a wilderness, and the college yard an Indian bunting-ground." In one respect, however, Michigan is less advanced or revolutionary than the State University of Kansas, which not only admits women to classes, but also to professorships. The difference between these Western seats of learning and the University of Sydney struck the traveller forcibly, and he appears to have no sympathy with the
reverence shown by the latter for old formulas and titles. "Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Senate, Syndicates, and even Proctors, all are here in the antipodes. Registrar, professors, 'seniors,' fees, fines, and petitions with the University seal attached ' ; 'Board of Classical Studies,'—the whole corporation sits in borrowed plumage ; the very names of the colleges are being imitated." There is something not wholly to be condemned in this love of ancient usages, and of precedents borrowed from the old country. In the establishment of a Colonial University, while utility is the prime consideration, a place, at least in these minor matters, may surely be allowed to sentiment. We know how frequently and curiously this conservative feeling is exhibited in the United States, but in our own colonies it is of course far more strongly marked. Take, as an instance, this laconic descrip- tion of a New Zealand settlement :--" Christ Church—Episco- palian—dignified—the first settlement in the province, and still the capital, affects to despise Ilokitika, already more wealthy and more populous. Christchurch imports English rooks to caw in the elm trees of her cathedral close ; Hokitika imports men. Christ- church has not fallen away from her traditions ; every street is named from an English bishopric, and the society is that of an English country town." All importations from England, bad as well as good, are keenly appreciated by the colonists. In the digger localities the hotels are in reality gin palaces. At the Buller, where drinking and digging form the sole occupations, the rough, hard-working community retains a feeling for what is beautiful, and above all, for what is English. In proof whereof Mr. Dilke records that in his voyage down the coast from Nelson the cabin was full of cut flowers for bouquets, of which the diggers are extremely fond. "The fact," he adds, "was pretty enough : the store set upon a single rose—' an English rosebud '—culled from a plant that had been brought from the old country in a clipper ship, was still more touching." But to return once more to America.
Mr. Dilke visited the Mormon settlement in company with Mr. Hepworth Dixon, and his graphic account of Utah may be advantageously compared with that of his companion. His first experience of life in this strange settlement was significant enough :—" After an agreeable chat with the ladies, I went to my room, which I afterwards found to be that of the eldest son, a youth of sixteen years. In one corner stood two Ballard rifles and two revolvers, and a Militia uniform hung from pegs upon the wall. When I lay down with my hands underneath the pillow,— an attitude instinctively adopted to escape the sand-flies,—I touched something cold. I felt it—a full-sized Colt, and capped." Strange as this may sound to us, it is not strange in a laud where ladies occasionally imitate their lords in the use of deadly weapons. Mr. Mike considers that Brigham Young is undoubtedly sincere, but that his revelations are rather those of a political philosopher than of a prophet. That he. possesses sagacity and practical wisdom is evident from his government of the Mormons, and the secret of his success may be gathered from his remark that "the highest inspiration is good sense—the knowing what to do and how to do it." An amusing chapter is devoted to Western editors, one of whom inquired of the English traveller, "How might you have left literatooral pursoots ? How air Tennyson and Thomas S. Carlyle ? Guess them ther men ken sling ink, they ken." Few American editors, it seems, are native-born, but this was a genuine New Englander. Mr. Dilke observes that their hardships are great and their payment small and slow. "It consists often of little but the satisfaction which it is to the editor's vanity to be 'liquored' by the best man of the place, treated to an occasional chat with the governor of the territory, to a chair in the overland mail office whenever he comes near the bar, and to a pistol-shot once or twice in a month." Nothing is more remarkable Arm the fact that the most persistent opposition to Mormonism is carried on in the Mormon city, where the Vedette is suffered to wage weekly war against the Saints, and this in a style which the New l'ark Herald would find it impossible to emulate. Probably before long they will be forced to encounter or escape from a more dangerous enemy. "The Pacific Railroad," says Mr. Dilke, "is not merely meant to be the shortest line from New York to San Francisco, but it is meant to put down Mormonistn."
His description of San Francisco,—a delightful place for all living creatures except dogs, which are muzzled throughout the year,—is the best that we have met with. California is the most English of the States, and of the religious communities the Epis- copalians are the most flourishing. In San Francisco, the English, British and American, "have distanced the Irish, beaten down the Chinese by force, and are destined to physically preponderate in the cross-breed, and give the tone, political and moral, to the Pacific shore." Yet the Chinese number one-tenth of the popula- tion, and there, as in Australia, create a problem which the white settlers find it difficult to solve. The Chinese are dirty and in many ways unpleasant to other immigrants, who never fail by word or 'blow to remind them of their inferiority. Nevertheless, though denied civil rights in California, and roughly ill-used in Victoria, they continue to increase. It is seldom that a colonist has a word to say in their favour, yet, doubtless, the ill-character they bear is exaggerated by prejudice. At Geelong, Mr. Dilke was informed on official authority that there is less crime among the Chinese than among any equal number of English in the colony.
We are unable to accompany Mr. Dilke as he follows England round the world. Vigour of thought and shrewdness of observa- tion are obvious throughout. He has the rare art of describing what he sees in brief incisive words, he can tell a story admirably, he has accumulated a large store of facts and applies them with singular felicity ; he has strong opinions as a social and political economist, and expresses them with energy and clearness. Greater Britain has therefore a double merit. It is an entertain- ing and spirited record of travel in lands which have a fascinating interest for Englishmen, and it discusses a number of questions which are of the highest moment with regard to the future of our race. Very difficult some of these questions are, and Mr. Dllke is sometimes apt to ignore their difficulty by an epigrammatic asser- tion. Few readers will agree with all his arguments on the broad topics suggested in these pages, but all readers will feel that they are in the presence of a writer whose distinct purpose, breadth of culture, and liberality of thought entitle him to atten- tion and command respect. It is seldom that we meet with a work so able and suggestive as Greater Britain.
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