A DREAM OF A.D.2000

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2230, 19 September 1889, Page 2

A DREAM OF A.D.2000

An English editor pu-s a t leeoopa to his mind's eye and looks round the world of a hundrvl years honce, und ee-s the English- spe. king race on the top of t varything. He says : The present populations ot the British Empire, Including o^lonles •nd dependencies, Is nearly 310,000,000. That of the 44 Btates wbioh make up tbe great Amerioan Republlo exceeds 61,00 ),000, and that of the world at largo. comprising all people, notions, aod tongues, Is about 1,500 000,000 The numerical strength of the English-speak-ing raoe may therefore be roughly taken aB one-fourth that of tho whole world. Moreover, It It o-loala.ed that at tbe present rate of inorease the year 2000 will see the population of the British Empire at oert-inly not less than 600 000,000, and of the United States at 100 000,000. At that time, taking tho most favorable view, It Is not likely that any European State will bave Inoreased In tbe same proportions, leaving out of consideration altogether ba desolating effects of war, wbioh is a 1 most the normal condition of the semlsavage populations of which the European Continent la largely composed. Franco cm but juat hold her own. Turkey Is dying om for want of Turkt, or m oher words, as foretold by Holy WMi, " Euphrates'- stream Is drying up'"; and so from different causes, the Continental nations are gradually but surely losing their virility, and with tha', their power for good or evil m tbe future. Neither Germany nor Fracas has any of the colonising Instlnot, aud their attempts In thli direotlon have proved a dismal failure In Algeria, Tonquin, East Afrloa, Samoa, New Guinea, and elsewhere. Spain hai her chance, and lost It by greed and oruelty. Portugal and Belgium are making apacmodlo effort* to es'abllah themselves In Afrloa ; but m one esse money Is wanted, and lv the other men, to give lifo and permanence to the undertaking. England holds Afrloa In the hollow of her haod, and the world may as well recognise that faot at first as at Inst, despite the senility of her home government and the fatuous and self-inter-ested opposition of her old dependency In the south. So also with Australasia and ail the surrounding islands, great and small, whioh 'constitute Pao'ua. Does anyone doubt that the handful of Dutch aud Germans, who have by the criminal negllgenoa of our Colonial Offloj somehow managed to get a foothold In New Guinea, or tho French oonvicts, who render New Caledonia a roproaoh and shame to clvllts-t on, will hold their own when the great oolonies of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and New Zealand shall reaoh thoir manhood ? Tbey will be absorbed and assimilated, as It natural, by the greater power, and tho seleotloo of the fittest will here, as elsewhere, demonstrate the pre-eminence of the English strain for the work required to be accomplished. Turning mw to the vaijst continent of Amerloa, North and South, everything points to a time sooner or later when all the divided and subdivided states will be united under oat central authority — either an Anglo-Amerl* oan Empire or a fi deration of quastindependaut states, receiving their polltloal and soolal inspiration from London or Washing. on, ob a re-unlted both,