THE CATASTROPHE IN CHINA. [TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SiR,—Though I certainly make no pretension to " eyes that cam penetrate far beyond " those of others, yet I shall be glad if you will allow me to offer a few remarks upon your interesting article of last Saturday on " The Catastrophe in China," and the possible beneficent meanings thereof ?
Why may we not look upon this calamity, not as the direct- work at all of a beneficent Providence, but rather as the necessary punishment wrought by Providence, under the form of inexorable Nature, for certain wilful stupidities and negligences ? Am I libelling the late Canon Kingsley in suggesting that this would possibly have been his view of the case ? If such be the -right view of the decimation of an English village or district by cholera, why not also of the slaughter of a few millions of Asiatics by famine, just pour encourager les autres to greater economic wisdom, in preservation of forests, &c. ? Mere magni- tude should present no difficulty in considering such questions.
Or again, assuming the correctness of your postulate that this stupendous famine is the direct work of Providence, can•
we not discover a sufficient motive for it from the European point of view ? It has always seemed to me one of the greatest mysteries in the providential arrangement of this world of ours that nearly one-third of its population should consist of Chinese ; and I have been haunted for half my life with the dread of yet another invasion of the West by the East. And it will arrive some day, unless the gun of the future learn to deal with millions as a modem battery of Armstrong or Krupp guns would deal with thousands. Meantime, we have great cause to be thankful that it has pleased Providence that these poor wretches should quietly die of starvation in China, instead of swarming over Europe like locusts, " eating up its people as it were bread.' The consumption of Europeans by their own kin is only too rapid and too certain at their present rate of increase.
I prefer, however, a third view, which may be called the Epicurean, though I fear this is excluded by the very terms of your article,—it is that we have here simply one more illustra- tion of the .magnificent prodigality of Nature, who produces- thousands of seeds for every plant brought to maturity, thou- sands of ova for every animal, and that ultimately, in the struggle for existence, of men, as well as of other organisms, the fittest will survive, but that this struggle cannot be satisfactorily fought out without enormous numbers being engaged.
One other point I should like to notice, if I am not already too-
tedious,—viz., the assertion in the article in question that the- earlier history of mankind was a history of suffering. • My own• belief is that the total amount of suffering in the world is not a whit diminished by the diminution of wars, famines, pestilences, and the various other forms of physical torture, the record of which makes us shudder ; that in fact the very civilisation which tends to diminish these causes of suffering diminishes also—pro- bably in an increased ratio—the toughness of fibre requisite for endurance, and therefore increases enormously the force, with which these records appeal to modern imaginations.
The petty trials and hardships of modern life, I venture to- think, are for modern men more grievous to bear than the so- called great calamities were for our less-refined ancestors.—I am,.
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