THE NEW COSMOPOLITANISM.
ANEW kind of Cosmopolitanism is developing itself among us which will one day, and probably within no long time, exercise an important political effect. Com- munication throughout the world is improving with mar- vellous rapidity—the distance between England and India, for instance, if computed in time, has been halved in one generation,—knowledge of the circumstances of the world is increasing every year, while the interest on money in this country is decreasing perceptibly with every decade, till the unhappy middle class begins to believe Mr. Goschen's old prophecy of a general 2 per cent. At the same time, capital is accumulating fast, faster, we see reason to believe, even than is shown in the Income-tax Returns ; and the wealthy are beginning to use it in a new way. They are flinging themselves upon properties throughout the world which promise what they con- sider reasonable per-centages. They buy up not only estates, but businesses ; not only stocks, but speculations. In the United States, in the dozen or so of rich countries which we call South America, in all the Colonies of Austral- asia, throughout South Africa, in China, India, and Persia, in Egypt, in Turkey, and even in Western Europe, more especially its great cities, nothing, whether estate or busi- ness or " concession," is ever sold without the appearance of an English capitalist, or the "agent of an English syndicate," as a dangerous bidder. If a Company has exhausted its capital on a promising mine, a fleet of steamers, a big shop, an over-large estate, or anything whatever with a flavour of monopoly about it, such as water- works, saltworks, or forests, an Englishman steps forward, apparently with limitless money behind him, and throwing into the affair a new energy, speedily alters the aspect of the accounts. He is sometimes severely bitten ; but he usually succeeds, and very often reputed failure means only low dividends after a cycle of prosperity which has returned the capital twice over. Of the extent to which the new system is carried, we may judge by considering two well-known facts. The Americans, who certainly do not alarm themselves about small competitors, are passing laws to prevent English capitalists from buying up whole districts, and to restrict so far as possible the conveyance of entire trades to Trusts, fed in many cases with English money. In one single State of South America, the Argentine Republic, a specially qualified Times' reporter declares this week that the lowest estimate he can make of the British capital invested is £150,000,000, most of it safe, if we take averages and allow for financial cataclysms, and some of it producing what are here con- sidered excessive profits. There are English cow-lords- not cowboys—in the Republic whose incomes in good years are like those of wealthy English Peers ; and we are told they are swallowing Paraguay, of all places in the world, in great mouthfuls. We hear every day of men in English society whose incomes, when examined, come from estates in the strangest places ; and, in fact, Englishmen, either directly or through syndicates, or through invest- ment in great mortgages, are present and powerful in every land, as much felt as ever were the aristocratic millionaires of Rome within the circle which surrounds the Mediter- ranean, and of which one-half, to the shame of Europe be it spoken, is still lost to civilisation. To make these new investments, which now rival, if they do not greatly exceed, the magnitude of the National Debt, succeed permanently, it is necessary for the investors to know much. They must understand the countries they work in, their peoples, their policies, their laws, as well as their physical advantages. Thousands of them of course know nothing, trusting their money on the assurances of other people ; and we have ourselves come across persons deriving considerable incomes from pro- perties the locality of which, when cross-questioned about them, they absurdly misdescribed, one in particular placing his estate—which was, we may add, the most real of realties—in the wrong quarter of the globe. Thousands, however, accurately know what they are doing, having seen with their own eyes ; and thousands more, filled with the interest which possession inspires, are teaching themselves diligently all that there is to learn. You meet every day quiet people who on some quite unex- pected subject know everything, and find on inquiry that their knowledge has been acquired first of all in order to safeguard their money. They are helped in their self-education by another class, who learn not for pay, but from intellectual interest, who are sick of English politics and English affairs, and keep themselves alive by what is really, though the phrase will annoy them, a study of "geography," in the new sense in which men like Rlis6e Reclus use the word, men to whom "the earth" means the planet, plus all its people, plus all their habitudes and resources. Through both classes a stream of knowledge pours in which is already affecting opinion, and will affect it yet more. Insularity is departing from the wealthy, and the investing classes, the commercial classes, the travelling classes, and above all the studying classes, are imbibing, or at least learning to know of, not only facts, but views of which yesterday they had no conception. They catch hold of foreign ideas, scientific ideas, business ideas, above all Colonial ideas, and their minds pass half-unconsciously through a great change. They become, to begin with, patriots in a new sense,—the Imperialist sense. They feel the world-wide position of Great Britain in a novel way, and are as unlike their former selves, as Mr. Schnadhorst, talking on African affairs after his visit to the Cape, is unlike what. Mr. Schnadhorst, talking on the same affairs, would have been before. A good deal of rather fluid altruism has gone out of them. We all saw a good illustration of the change in the tone of opinion about the quarrel with Portugal. Ten years ago, Lord Salisbury would have been fiercely assailed for his action in that matter, and we rather fancy he himself, deceived by an old experience, expected some hubbub ; but there was none whatever. The Scotch, by reason of their engagements of all kinds in Africa, commercial, religious, and scientific, know all about the Portuguese as Colonists ; and consequently both parties in the State were prepared to support decided resolutions. The same body of opinion is calling even now for more " firmness " in dealing with German claims, and it is the Premier who holds them back, not they who are holding back the Premier. That is a considerable change, and it is one, we think, which we shall see when any such question comes conspicuously to the front. Then, opinion is not only growing more decided, it is getting harder too. The decay in the funds of the Aborigines Protection Society is only a symptom. To us, who remember distinctly what that Society was thirty-five years ago, and the former tone of all discussions about dark-skinned persons, the modification of opinion seems amazing ; but that it has occurred is past a doubt. Who now grows melancholy over the decay of the Maories, or resists the " distribution of Africa "—which means, in plain English, the conquest of Africa by the European nations—on the ground of the " indefeasible right " of the Negro to self-government on his own continent ? Europe is going to take away the very trees of the African forest, and nobody protests. And, finally, the new Cosmopolitanism is producing a new Conservatism. The directing classes are growing aware that all mankind are not alike, that the Millennium is not established everywhere when a Republic is proclaimed, that a large section of mankind are the better for a government which controls them instead of executing their will. This last conviction has as yet expressed itself in act but little, because it has not filtered down low enough ; but it will express itself, and will materially modify, even in the -United Kingdom, the disposition of the people to confide power to the Executive. You cannot watch the whole world and continue to believe, as was certainly believed forty years ago, that the weakness of Governments is, on the whole, greatly for their subjects' advantage. We cannot say we like the whole of the change we see. There is a sordid element in it, a thirst for quick cash gain such as our people once betrayed in India, which will, before it passes away again, produce a great deal of oppression, faintly concealed from men's consciences by the idea of " industrial discipline." As, too, places look nearer to people's minds, they betray a disposition to grip too much of the world in too widely divided quarters. Great Britain, if she desires to survive, must not monopo- lise the world, and must not try to hold so many kingdoms without making the necessary sacrifices. If she does, she will some day have to fight for her life, alone, against a world enraged, and with only the Negro to wish sincerely that she may come out victor. Above all, we are jealous of the new hardness of temper towards inferior races. The old ideas were, many of them, sickeningly silly. The Negro is not the equal of the white man, any more than the hand is the equal of the head; and conquest is not necessarily evil, but often a grand instru- ment in the progress of the world. But inequality is no justification for injustice, and we have no more right to kill Africans because we can, than to kill children. Nor have we any right to make them work solely for our benefit and on pay to which they object. Our right is to govern them for a time firmly, but leniently and with wisdom, for their protection in their immature stage, and to take possession of their countries without governing in return is outrageous oppression. " Spheres of influence" are, for the most part, countries where Euro- peans try to extort the advantages of governing without enduring its burdens or satisfying its responsibilities. The new Cosmopolitanism, if we do not misread its tone, will produce some big evils, though it will in return secure for us all a very necessary annealing of the mental and moral fibre. That had become too soft ; but in resuming our proper position as the soldiers of civilisation, we must take some little care, by-and-by perhaps much care, that we do not forget the deep moral chasm which separates the soldier from the brigand.
Previous page
