Page:National Life and Character.djvu/13



The greatest statesmen have constantly failed to predict the immediate future.—Yet there have been many successful prophecies of distant and great events.—In other words, we are fairly successful in ascertaining a general law of progress, but cannot define exactly how or when it will be worked out.—The statesman, moreover, prefers dealing with the immediate future, which he can influence, to taking precautions against great changes, which are most likely inevitable.—For instance, the transportation of an inferior race, like the negroes of the United States, to a country where they would be harmless, is too vast, and of too uncertain benefit, to be readily attempted.—Again, the tendency to increase the powers of the State, and invite its interposition, is so' strong that it would be difficult to check it.—Still, we may reduce the dimensions of a danger, which we clearly see, though we cannot avert it.—This book was first suggested by the observation, that America was filling up.—Later study has added the conviction, that the higher races can only live in the Temperate Zone.—If, however, emigration, which is the rough substitute for the organisation of labour, becomes impossible, the tendency to State Socialism, which is already strongly marked in certain British colonies, will become more and more powerful.—Moreover, the tendency to entrust the State with wider functions has long been adopted in Continental policy, and is being acclimatised in England.—This inquiry does not assume that State Socialism will be pushed to its furthest development, but only that some of its simplest applications will become law.—Kings may easily put themselves at the head of a movement for State Socialism, but personal rank and transmitted wealth are likely to be viewed with jealousy in the new order.—The change from one form of political life to another is not likely to be so momentous as the effects of the general change on character.—The world may gain something to balance what it loses,