The Southern Cross. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. Invercargill, Saturday, Sept. 16. THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON RACE.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 25, 16 September 1893, Page 8

The Southern Cross. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. Invercargill, Saturday, Sept. 16. THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON RACE.

The Hon John Fortescne, a wellknown writer on colonial subjects, has an article in a recent number of Nineteenth Century on the above topic which cannot fall to interest dwellers in the Greater Britain of the South. The trend of the article is to show that the English race cannot expect to compete on equal terms in tropical climates with the coloured races, and that the descendants of the orignal colonists are gradually becoming “disEnglished ” in respect of mental and physical characteristics. He also indulges in some prognostications regarding- what will be the future relations of the races now occupying the colonies. He maintains that the whole system of white supremacy in the tropics is artificial, and cities the case of Barbadoes, where the white population is practically only kept alive by constant infusion of fresh blood from Britain, and where can be noticed the insolence which the consciousness of physical superiority has bred in the descendants of the African slaves. Turning his attention to the southern colonies, and to New Zealand in particular as being the most English place out of England, Mr Fortescne marks a rapid process of alteration going on in the mental, and probably also in the physical, characteristics of the young New Zealander, consequent on the difference in the climate. The eternal leaden skies, fog, and other damp have produced the proverbial English melancholy, while the born and bred New Zealanders have faith in their own blue skies, and enjoy a new sensation, a source of pleasure unknown to their forefathers, a delight in existence for its own sake. When they lay themselves out for pleasure they can do so without fear that the elements will spoil it. Life, it is pointed out, is brighter and happier to them. They cease to be restless, gloomy and anxious, and become cheerful and light-hearted, more like the southern races of Europe. Mr Fortescne is far from urging that the New Zealander is corrupted by his climate, but he does say that he is changed by iL—quite probably for the better, it may be for the worse. “ And,” continues Mr Fortescne, “with each succeeding generation the national character in New Zealand will diverge further from its English prototype. Already the dominant characteristic in New Zealand is a certain joyous frivolity, a cheerful assurance that everything must be all right, or come right of itself sooner or later, and that meanwhile nothing really matters very much. There is no hard winter to bring home to people the consequences of extravagance, recklessness, and neglect of work as in England, and therefore the penalty paid for them is much lighter. Her people will be —as, indeed, they already to a great extent are cheerful, warm-hearted, pleasure - loving and optimistic, exempt from the English melancholy, and probably, also, lacking the English restlessness, earnestness, and, in the North, perhaps, energy. They will wean themselves from British traditions, British aspirations, British habits of thought, and evolve substitutes of their own more in harmony with their environment. Thus the gulf between them and the Old Country will wicien more and more until the two become totally alien to each other in character and feeling.” He thinks there is nothing to deplore herein, as difference does not necessarily mean inferiority in national character any more than in religion. Turning his attention to Australia, Mr Fortescne points out that though perhaps two*«thirds of it lie without the tropics, it is essentially a hot country.

and the High rates of infant mortality would indicate that it is not a favourable climate. Where the heat is damp its physical effect on the transplanted Anglo-Saxon is far more marked than in other parts of Australia, and on the east coast from Sydney northwards the debilitating effect of the climate may be seen, and it is, perhaps, sufficient in Sydney to destroy great activity in work. Certainly the people in that city wear in summer a limp, parboiled appearance, painfully resembling that of the degenerate whites in Barbadoes, but wheth’er the resemblance is more than skin deep ‘is another question. The writer then remarks how hysterically nervous is the Australian democracy over the admission of any alien race to the continent, the provinces varying in shrillness of outcry against them according to their proximity to the equator. Queensland, which is nearest the Equator, being loudest, and New South Wales next. This is generally attributed to the workingman’s prejudice against cheap labour, but it is more than probable that there is an unconscious and instinctive dread of any race which is more at home in a hot climate than the An-glo-Saxon. Some years ago Queensland imported coloured labour for the sugar plantations, but in 1885 the Premier fixed a term when it should cease. Last year, however, he carried a measure for the re-introduction of Polynesians. The Premier of South Australia lately visited India to negotiate with the Indian Government for the importation of East Indian coolies into that colony, and Mr Eortescue thinks that according to present indications, the future of tropical Australia seems likely to be committed to East Indian immigrants, the supply of Polynesians being meagre, African negroes unobtainable, and Chinese not only an abomination but a terror to Australians. He seems to think that the only solution of the desperate struggle still in progress between Capital and Labour in the face of the climatic influences will be the employment of Asiatic labour. “If everybody is to enjoy a high standard of comfort, and not to do too much work for the same —and this, with its connoted independence, seems to be the bone of contention between Labour and Capital in Australia —the object can be obtained by the employment of servile labour.” He has no doubt that the white man thus pampered and softened will degenerate physically.