Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/197

Rh under the passions of the terrible conflict then raging, the Congress, instead of heeding the request, repealed the former act appropriating five hundred thousand dollars.

The Indians, against their will, were transported, by coercive measures, to allotted lands beyond the Mississippi, but that was before the modern discovery that the United States should grant "fraternity and assistance to all people" under other than republican governments, and that universal suffrage was the infallible expedient for civilizing semibarbarous peoples. President Harrison, in his letter of acceptance, writing on another subject, says, "We are already under a duty to defend our civilization by excluding alien races whose ultimate assimilation with our people is neither possible nor desirable."

Remedies, strong and adequate and feasible, may not be found readily, but there are gentler and quieter agencies which may be used by both races to mutual advantage. The white people, in accepting the legitimate consequences of defeat, in vigorous efforts to restore antebellum prosperity, in establishing schools, in reconstructing shattered society, have done nobly, but they are not without sin. Laws, general and wise and impartial, on the statute-book need for their enforcement a sustaining public opinion, but this has not always been forthcoming. Lawless and violent proceedings, always unnecessary and demoralizing, sometimes as brutal as the crimes which excited horror; harsh and unjust contracts; interferences in elections; false registration and counting of votes, and other acts which the plea of self-preservation did not justify, have evinced the harshness and injustice of dominant power, and have not tended to soften prejudices or make the situation more tolerable. Each race is fortunately improving in intercourse and in dealings with the other, and time and sober judgment are, in a sensible degree, removing causes of alienation which are not inherent and incurable.

a blessing," said President Sir John Lubbock, at the late meeting of the International Congress of Zoölogists, "it would be for mankind if we could stop the enormous expenditure on engines for the destruction of life and property, and spend the tenth, the hundredth, even the thousandth part on scientific progress! Few people seem to realize how much science has done for man, and still fewer how much more it would still do if permitted. More students would doubtless have devoted themselves to science if it were not so systematically neglected in our schools; if men and boys were not given the impression that the field of discovery is well-nigh exhausted. We, gentlemen, know how far that is from being the case. Much of the land surface of the globe is still unexplored; the ocean is almost unknown; our collections contain thousands of species waiting to be described; the life-histories of many of our commonest species remain to be investigated, or have only recently been discovered."