MIGRATIONS OF RACE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5446, 10 September 1878, Page 3

MIGRATIONS OF RACE.

(From the Newcastle Chronicle.) , The Chinese difficulty is getting more and more hazardous with iu America. Mr. Welles, of Kentucky—who must not be confounded with Mr, Wells, the political, economist. aud American member of the Cobden Club—has presented a report on the Chinese question to the House of Representatives at Washington. The main purpose of the report, is to show that the Chinaman is an undesirable addition to the population of the United States, and it points" out, by the way, that the inundation of Chinamen is rapidly becoming a deluge. There are 15,000 Chinamen in tho Pacific States, says the report, and “ they will iu the near future ■ exceed tho male adult population of America in those Stares, and all other races combined.” This state of things is alarming only because tho peaceful invaders are Chinamen. America has received with open arms the exiles of all European countries, and there has resulted a community of blood which has produced a race distinctively American. Why should, there be any objection to the Chinaman’s, doing what the Englishman and the Frenchman, the German and the Spaniard, have done before him I The question is on© especially difficult to answer. The Chinaman at once raises an instinctive and indefinable dislike. There is a mysterious repulsion about him, and he never assimilates to the people amongst whom he Uyes. But these are not tho only characteristics which have mad© an increase iu Chinese immigration feared, not only in America, but in every country where the' Chinaman has made his appearance. There is prevalent a feeling almost amounting to dread that,; unless strong measures are taken, the people of the Celestial Empire are destined to overpower pur -Western civilisation. . China exports her. people, by thousands, and the vast streams of emigration are continually replenished by a-teeming population which almost outnumbers that of the Old World. II is this circumstance which gives rise to so much fear. Those who have bsen with the Chinaman anticipate a great migration of a race which will eventually “ push them from their stools.” The march -of nations wo3 once along the path of conquest. Theearller migratory races might have taken fpr their motto the words of Ancient Pistol:—

The world's mine oystir, Which I with,sword will open. The Tartars under Ghenghis Khan, and afterwards under Tamerlane, fought their way through Persia, swarmed in victorious hordes through Hindustan, touched Europe at Constantinople; and contemplated the conquest of the ancient and mighty Empire of China. The Goths,! under Alaric, grown weary of furnishing soldiers to the Roman army and "ladiators to' the Roman circus, gathered up their numbers for a mighty effort, marched into the heart of Italy, and thundered at tho gates of Rome. Attiia and his Huns emulilted the triumphs of the Gothic leader, and brought down the proud Roman name and the great empire which had boasted of the conquest of the world. * Clovis and his wild Prahks,'niarch!rig from their mud huts beside the Rhine and the Weser, conquered, half civilised ■ Gaul, and gave their name to territories which had long existed under far different designations. The deluge of barbaiism which swept over Europe in the fifth/ century had other objects besides conquest. it was a migration of race. Tho conquests'-• of Alexander loft " nothing behind them./ The ■ ; Macedonian marched to the, destruction of nu empire with an .army; which, was scarcely sufficient to garrison one, of its provinces, and ho dominated the world by means of soldiers the best of whom ryero drawn from a race which delighted in ;glory, but which had no motive to seek fresh settlements in other lands. ; In less than seventy years tho Arabs extended their conquests over wider territories than the Romans acquired in five centuries. But onlyin a few,, cases, did new populations settle in the viist, tracts which. had been • cleared by the sword. , Rome itself did little more.thau people Italy.- The followers of Romulus and.Reraus had not only to make a country,,but they had also to steal women through whom it might bs peopled. Whoa Romo grew into a victorious empire, its -only motive was, conquest and extended rule ; tho Romans dominated, but did not, settle. It was, only when the State washastening to decay that : the, Batin races bogm to found now homes away from what they had fondly termed the Eternal City, and to settle by the European shores of tho Black Sea aid along-the hanks -of the Danube. It was- different with the Goths and the Huns'and tho Xi’ranks. Theirs was a migration as well as a conquest;/ Out of their blood, assimilated with that of the people they had conquered, arose the germs of new and mighty nations and the elements of a more vast and perfect civilisation.

The causo'bf all migrations is the scarcity oftho"means of. subsistence.at home. America and Australia offer to the Chinaman what Britain, offered to tho Saxon and the Dane. He finds that great as his country is it is yet too small to support ;t?, vast and evcr-increas-ing population; ho has seen the French and Fugli-sh settle at Hongkong and Pekin ; he has learned much from them, has, perhaps, come to understand that .the “barbarian” world is much larger than China-, aud that there is room in it even for him. “The Hoang-ho aud , tho ICiang-ku,” says Dr. Latham, “ empty themselves into an ocean that, in these days of steam communication, leads to America, but which in the infancy of the world led; to a coasting trade only, or, at most, to a large island—-Japan.” And so the Chinaman .goes about bis conquests iu his own way, , Ho girds himself with no sword; he does not even carry his wife with him; but starts off alone, equipped only with a marvellous patience, a great aptitude for hard work, aud a constitution that enables him to live in almost any climate. He is willing to work hard aud to die anywhere, on condition only that Ilia bones are sent back to his native land. At length, too, after some experience in tho land of the stranger, he is bringing with him his household gods, Ins wife, aud the Joss to whom ho will chin-chin in his moments of private devotion. Perhaps in time he will get the better of the superstition ■which makes him desire to havo his hones laid to rest in the Flowery Laud; and will settle among Americans and Europeans just as the Saxons settled in Britain and the Franks on the borders of the Seine. It is difficult to give any good reason why the Chinaman should uot do what has bCen done by’all other controlling races And yet the dread of a great Chinese migration is quite a 'reasonable feeling. large exodus from China would result in a fight between *two diverse civilisations,; and the triumph might rest with numbers rather than with the higher qualities of race. The Chinaman cannot be exterminated like the red man. or the Maori, or the brutalised Tasmanian, He gives no cause for extermination, aud he persists in living under any conditions which are suitable to other men. How is he to be put down ? Even America must bear with him, unless she can see her way to prohibit all further immigration from the East.