Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898

While the developing society has thus become integrated, it has passed from its original uniform state into a multiform state. Among savages there are no unlikenesses of occupations. Every man is hunter and upon occasion warrior; every man builds his own hut, makes his own weapons; every wife digs roots, catches fish, and carries the household goods when a change of locality is needed: what division of labor exists is only between the sexes. We all know that it is quite otherwise with a civilized nation. The changes which have produced the coherence have done this by producing the division of labor: the two going on pari passu. The great parts and the small parts, and the parts within parts, into which a modern society is divisible, are clusters of men made unlike in so far as they discharge the unlike functions required for maintaining the national life. Rural laborers and farmers, manufacturers and their workpeople, wholesale merchants and retailers, etc., etc., constitute differentiated groups, which make a society as a whole extremely various in composition. Not only in its industrial divisions is it various, but also in its governmental divisions, from the components of the legislature down through the numerous kinds and grades of officials, down through the many classes of masters and subordinates, down through the relations of shopkeeper and journeyman, mistress and maid. That is to say, the change which has been taking place is, under one aspect, a change from homogeneity of the parts to heterogeneity of the parts.

A concomitant change has been from a state of vague structure, so far as there is any, to a state of distinct structure. Even the primary differentiation in the lowest human groups is confused and unsettled. The aboriginal chief, merely a superior warrior, is a chief only while war lasts – loses all distinction and power when war ceases; and even when he becomes a settled chief, he is still so little marked off from the rest that he carries on his hut-building, tool-making, fishing, etc., just as the rest do. In such organization as exists nothing is distinguished, everything is confused. Quite otherwise is it in the developed nation. The various occupations, at the same time that they have become multitudinous, have become clearly specialized and sharply limited. Read the London Directory, and while shown how numerous they are, you are shown by the names how distinct they are. This increasing distinctness has been shown from the early stages when all freemen were warriors, through the days when retainers now fought and now tilled their fields, down to the times of standing armies; or again from the recent days when in each rural household, besides the bread-winning occupation, there were carried on spinning, brewing, washing, to the present day when these several supplementary occupations have been deputed to separate classes exclusively devoted to them. It has been shown from the ages when guilds quarreled about the things included in their respective few businesses, down to our age when the many businesses of artisans are fenced round and disputed over if transgressed, as lately by boilermakers and fitters; and is again shown by the ways in which the professions – medical, legal, and other – form themselves into bodies which shut out from practice, if they can, all who do not bear their stamp. And throughout the governmental organization, from its first stage in which the same man played various parts – legislative, executive, judicial, militant, ecclesiastic – to late stages when the powers and functions of the multitudinous classes of officials are clearly prescribed, may be traced this increasing sharpness of division among the component parts of a society. That is to say, there has been a change from the indefinite to the definite. While the social organization has advanced in coherence and heterogeneity, it has also advanced in definiteness.

If, now, Mr. Mallock will turn to First Principles, he will there see that under its chief aspect Evolution is said to be a change from a state of indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a state of definite, coherent heterogeneity. If he reads further on he will find that these several traits of evolution are successively exemplified throughout astronomic changes, geologic changes, the changes displayed by each organism, by the aggregate of all organisms, by the development of the mental powers, by the genesis of societies, and by the various products of social life – language, science, art, etc. If he pursues the inquiry he will see that in the series of treatises (from which astronomy and geology were for brevity's sake omitted) dealing with biology, psychology, and sociology, the purpose has been to elaborate the interpretations sketched out in First Principles; and that I have not been concerned in any of them to do more than delineate those changes of structure and function which, according to the definition, constitute Evolution. He will see that in treating of social evolution I have dealt only with the transformation through which the primitive small social germ has passed into the vast highly developed nation. And perhaps he will then see that those which he regards as all-important factors are but incidentally referred to by me because they are but unimportant factors in this process of transformation. The agencies which he emphasizes, and in one sense rightly emphasizes, are not agencies by which the development of structures and functions has been effected; they are only agencies by which social life has been facilitated and exalted, and aids furnished for further social evolution.

Respecting the essential causes of this social transformation, it must suffice to say that it results from certain general traits in human beings, joined with the influences of their varying circumstances.

Every man aims to pass from desire to satisfaction with the least possible hindrance – follows the line of least resistance. Either the shortest path, or the path which presents fewest impediments, is that which he chooses; and the like applies to courses of conduct at large: he does not use great effort to satisfy a want when small effort will do. Given his surroundings and the occupation he chooses, when choice is possible, is that which promises a satisfactory livelihood with the least tax on such powers as he has, bodily and mental – is the easiest to his particular nature, all things considered. What holds of individuals holds of masses of individuals; and hence the inhabitants of a tract offering facilities for a particular occupation fall into that occupation. In § 732 of the Principles of Sociology I have given from various countries illustrations of the ways in which local conditions determine the local industries: – instance among ourselves mining districts where there are coal, ironstone, lead, slate; wheat-growing districts and pastoral districts; fruit and hop districts; districts for weavers, stockingers, workers in iron; places for shipbuilding, importing, fishing, etc.: showing that certain sections of the population become turned into organizations for the production of certain commodities, without reference to the directive agency of any man. So in each case is it with the various classes of merchants, shopkeepers, professional men, etc., who in each of these centers minister to those engaged in its special industries: nobody ordering them to come or to go.

Similarly when we pass from production to distribution. As in India at the present time, where a Juggernaut festival is accompanied by a vast fair; as, according to Curtius and Mommsen, in Greece and Rome, the gatherings of people to make sacrifices to the gods were the occasions for trading; so in Christian times, church festivals and saints' days, drawing assemblages of people for worship, led to active exchange of commodities – the names of the fairs proving their origin. This was not arranged by any one: it arose from the common sense of all who wanted to sell some things and buy others. There has been a like history for the rise of markets, and the transition from weekly to bi-weekly, and finally to daily, markets in respect of important things – corn, money, securities. No superior man, political or other, dictated these developments. When barter gave place to exchange by means of a currency, the like happened. One wanting to dispose of surplus goods, meeting those who had no personal need for such goods, took in exchange certain things in universal demand, which he knew he would be able to pass on in like manner – in early stages articles of food, of warmth, of defense, of ornament; and from such articles arose in each case a currency – here dried fish, there tea-bricks, and in other cases skins, bundles of cotton, here standard bars of rock salt, there standard bars of iron, in one place definite lengths of cloth, and in another fine mats, and in many places ornaments and the materials for ornaments: which last, gold and silver, being relatively portable, passed into wide use. These precious metals were at first in quantities actually weighed; then in quantities of professed weight; and finally in quantities bearing the king's stamp as being the most trustworthy. No great man – political, industrial, or other – invented this system. It has everywhere resulted from men's efforts to satisfy their needs in the easiest ways. So was it with the transition from a currency of intrinsic value to one of representative value. When, instead of a direct payment in coin, there came to be used a memorandum of indebtedness to be presently discharged, which could be transferred to others – when, as in Italy, to save the weighing and testing of miscellaneous coins, there arose the practice of depositing specified quantities with a custodian and having from him negotiable receipts – when, as in England, the merchants, after having been robbed by the king of their valuables, left for security in the Tower, sought safer places, and, depositing them in the vaults of goldsmiths, received in return "goldsmiths' notes," which could pass from hand to hand; there was initiated a paper-currency. Goldsmiths developed into bankers; after central banks there arose provincial banks; promises to pay became to a great extent substitutes for actual payments; and presently grew up the supplementary system of checks, extensively serving in place of coin and notes. Finally, bank-clerks in London, instead of presenting to the respective banks the many and various claims upon them, met and exchanged these claims and settled the balance: whence presently came the clearing house. No superior man arranged all this. Each further stage was prompted by the desire to economize labor. From primitive fairs up to the daily transactions of the money market, distribution and exchange have developed without the dictation of any great man, either of Mr. Carlyle's sort or of Mr. Mallock's sort. It has been so throughout all other arrangements subserving national life, even the governmental. Though here at least it seems that the individual will and power play the largest part, yet it is otherwise. I do not merely refer to the fact that without loyalty in citizens a ruler can have no power; and that so the supremacy of a man intrinsically or conventionally great is an outcome of the average nature; but I refer to the fact that governmental evolution is essentially a result of social necessities. On tracing its earliest stages from savage life upwards, it becomes manifest that even a ministry is not the mere invention of a king. It arises everywhere from that augmentation of business which goes along with increase of territory and authority: entailing the necessity for deputing more and more work. Under its special aspect it seems to be wholly a result of the king's private action, but under its general aspect it is seen to be determined by the conditions of his existence. And it is so with governmental institutions at large. Without tracing these further it will suffice to quote the saying of Macintosh – "Constitutions are not made but grow."

Of course inequalities of nature and consequent inequalities of relative position are factors in social changes. Of course, as implied above, any assertion of the approximate equality of human beings, save in the sense that they are beings having sets of faculties common to them all, is absurd; and it is equally absurd to suppose that the unlikenesses which exist are without effects on social life. I have pointed out that in the earliest stages of social evolution, when war is the business of life, the supremacy of a leader or chief, or primitive king, is a fact of cardinal importance; and also that the initiator of ecclesiastical control is necessarily distinguished from others "by knowledge and intellectual capacity." The beginnings of industrial evolution are also ascribed by me to differences of individual capacity; as instance the following quotations from that part of the Principles of Sociology which deals with Industrial Institutions.

The natural selection of occupations has for its primary cause certain original differences between individuals, partly physical, partly psychical. Let us for brevity's sake call this the physio-psychological cause (§ 730).

That among the fully civilized there are in like manner specializations of function caused by natural aptitudes, needs no showing: professions and crafts are often thus determined … occupations of relatively skilled kinds having fallen into the hands of the most intelligent (§ 731).

Speaking generally, the man who, among primitive peoples, becomes ruler, is at once a man of power and a man of sagacity: his sagacity being in large measure the cause of his supremacy. We may therefore infer that as his political rule, though chiefly guided by his own interests, is in part guided by the interests of his people, so his industrial rule, though having for its first end to enrich himself, has for its second end the prosperity of industry at large. It is a fair inference that on the average his greater knowledge expresses itself in orders which seem, and sometimes are, beneficial (§ 770).

In its beginnings slavery commonly implies some kind of inferiority (§ 795).

Considered as a form of industrial regulation, slavery has been natural to early stages of conflicts and consolidations (§ 800).

The rise of slavery exhibits in its primary form the differentiation of the regulative part of a society from the operative part (§ 798).

The recognition of these effects of individual differences, especially in early stages, may rightly go along with the assertion that all the large traits of social structure are otherwise determined – that all those great components of a society which carry on the various industries, making the life of the whole possible, all those specialized classes which have established and maintained the inter-dependence of the producing structures, by facilitating and regulating the exchange of their products, have arisen from the play of aggregate forces, constituted of men's desires directed by their respective sets of circumstances. Mr. Mallock alleges that the great fact of human inequality – the fact that there is a minority "more gifted and efficient than the majority" – is the fundamental fact from which "the main structural characteristics of all civilized societies spring."[10 - Nineteenth Century, pp. 314, 315.] That he should assert this in presence of all the evidence which the Principles of Sociology puts before him, is, to use the weakest word, surprising. If his assertion be true, however, the way of demonstrating its truth lies open before him. In volumes II. and III. of the Principles of Sociology, several groups of institutions, presented by every developed society, are dealt with under the heads, Political, Ecclesiastical, Professional, Industrial: seventy-one chapters being included in them. Each chapter treats of some aspect, some division or subdivision, of the phenomena grouped under the general head. Instead of the Industrial Institutions discussed above, suppose that Mr. Mallock takes a group not touched upon – Professional Institutions. The thesis worked out in the part so entitled is that all the professions are differentiated from the priesthood; and the differentiation is tacitly represented as due to the slow operation of those natural causes which lead to specializations of function throughout the whole social aggregate. If Mr. Mallock is right, then of the chapters dealing with the ten professions enumerated, each is wrong by omitting to say anything about the great man, political, industrial, or other, who set up the differentiation or from time to time consciously gave it a more pronounced character – who thought that it would be well that there should be a separate medical class, or a separate teaching class, or a separate artist class, and then carried his thought into effect. Mr. Mallock's course is simply to take each of these chapters and show how, by the recognition of the supplementary factor on which he insists, the conclusions of the chapter are transformed. If he does this he will do more than by merely asserting that my views of social evolution are wrong because the "great fact of human inequality" "is systematically and ostentatiously ignored."

If in his title Mr. Mallock had, instead of "Evolution," written Social Sustentation, the general argument of his book would have been valid. If, further, he had alleged that social sustentation is instrumental to social evolution, and that in the absence of processes facilitating social sustentation social evolution can not take place, no one could have gainsaid his conclusion. And if he had inferred that whoever improves these processes betters the conditions which favor social evolution, his inference would have been true. But this admission may be made without admitting that the men who directly or indirectly further sustentation, or who improve the quality of the social units, are the agents who determine and direct social evolution. An account of their doings in no way constitutes an account of that social transformation from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, in which the evolution of a society essentially consists.

Moreover Mr. Mallock is justified in contending that the great man – discoverer, inventor, teacher, administrator, or other – may equitably receive all the reward which, under the principle of contract, flows to him as the result of his superiority; and that disregard of his claim by the mass of men is alike inequitable and ungrateful. This is the position I have myself taken, as witness the following: —

Even were an invention of no benefit to society unless thrown open to unbought use, there would still be no just ground for disregarding the inventor's claim; any more than for disregarding the claim of one who labors on his farm for his own benefit and not for public benefit. But as it is, society unavoidably gains immensely more than the inventor gains. Before he can receive any advantage from his new process or apparatus, he must confer advantages on his fellow men – must either supply them with a better article at the price usually charged, or the same article at a lower price. If he fails to do this, his invention is a dead letter; if he does it, he makes over to the world at large nearly all the new mine of wealth he has opened. By the side of the profits which came to Watt from his patents, place the profits which his improvements in the steam-engine have since brought to his own nation and to all nations, and it becomes manifest that the inventor's share is infinitesimal compared with the share mankind takes. And yet there are not a few who would appropriate even his infinitesimal share![11 - Justice, pp. 110, 111.]

Had Mr. Mallock recognized the fundamental distinction I have pointed out between social sustentation, life, activity, enlightenment, etc., on the one hand, and the development of social structures on the other, his polemic against socialists and collectivists would have been equally effective, and he would not have entailed upon me an expenditure of time and energy which I can ill spare. —The Nineteenth Century.

THE TORRENTS OF SWITZERLAND

By EDGAR E. DAWSON, M. E

Mark Twain once said that he was in constant expectation in Switzerland of seeing a farmer fall out of his farm. The farmer has in many cases appreciated his hazardous position when harvesting his crops, and has put on crampoons to prevent a precipitous trip into the valley below. The crampoons prevent the farmer leaving his farm in such an undignified manner, but they do not prevent that same farm leaving its position on the mountain side. To show how, in many cases, the mountain sides are kept intact is the object of this paper. The old simile, "I am as sure of it as of the ground on which I stand," would be as much out of place in some parts of Switzerland as in those parts of the world where earthquakes are endemic. In fact, in these latter places, though the surface may receive a good shaking, it generally returns to somewhat the same neighborhood after its nervous peregrinations are over. Not so with the Swiss mountain side. When part of the mountain takes leave of the rest, it is forever.

Switzerland is often spoken of somewhat derisively as a garden, so perfectly have its pleasure grounds been laid out, and so completely comfortable does one find one's self in the midst of Nature's grandeurs. If its water courses had not been controlled and cared for as are those of a well-conducted park it would be chaos! The constant and vigilant struggle the Swiss have been forced to maintain against the liquid element is much to their credit, for they have generally been victorious. They have spent enormous sums of money in keeping their torrents and rivers within reasonable limits, and are even now, at times, forced to suppress new insurrections on the part of these irresponsible agents. The corrections of the water courses have been necessary for several reasons. In the first place, the erosions on the mountain sides result in deposits which present different inconveniences, of which I shall speak later. In the second place, the erosions are frequently the cause of landslides. The work of regulating the action of the water courses is now done according to accepted rules based on experience and on theories which have been confirmed by facts. Years ago, before the confederation took charge of this matter, it was done often in a haphazard, empirical fashion by the local authorities, with or without the aid of an engineer. But some great disasters in the canton of Grisons awakened the people to what might occur to many of them who had hitherto been more fortunate. At the end of September, 1868, both slopes of the Alps, and particularly the cantons of Valais and Grisons, were visited by floods of enormous magnitude. Such was the devastation caused that an appeal was made to the generosity of the nation at large in behalf of the sufferers. This was responded to with such liberality that a large portion of the sum subscribed was put aside for the purpose of improving the water courses permanently. The fact that collective action was necessary in the attempts to control the turbulent streams became very apparent. This being the case, the state was called upon to take charge of this colossal enterprise. In July, 1871, by federal decree, the confederation declared that the correction and extinction of torrents was a matter of public utility, and worthy of the subsidies of the national Government. At the same time the relative burdens of the cantons and the confederation were settled. The importance of the improvement of the water courses and of the wooding of the regions where they rise was recognized in the Constitution of 1874. There the matter was definitely put under federal control and classed with the allied question of the conservation of the forests. The problem of keeping the waters under control in Switzerland ranges from the marshy lowlands to the summits of the passes. In spite of the varying conditions that this range entails, there are certain general principles that bear on all cases where the water is in movement. As the Swiss supplies his want of coal by harnessing his streams, so he makes the water do a large share of the work of correcting its erring ways and preparing itself to be harnessed. This he does by utilizing its power of carrying or depositing stones and soil, according as it is held within narrow banks or allowed to roam at will. As this power depends also on the steepness of the slope down which it runs, he uses this latter factor as well.

When he has got the water courses into what he considers good working condition and one that should be permanent, he tries to clinch matters. This is done by so combining the various conditions of cross-section, slope, and quality of soil that the action of the water is automatic – that is, it brings down no more earth and stones than it is capable of carrying below to safer places where the dangers of floods are small. Whenever the force with which the water moves along is stronger than the cohesion of the soil, erosion occurs. This erosion will continue, the channel of the stream becoming ever deeper, until a soil is encountered whose resistance is equal to the erosive action of the water. As the alluvion is carried on, the slope of the stream will become steeper and steeper the higher one goes. This circumstance would be of much greater importance if the gorges and gullies in which most of the streams run were not so well provided with rock. The power of the water to cause erosion is lessened in proportion to the amount of material it is carrying with it, which material is generally the product of previous erosions. Whenever the current needs all its strength to carry the material it has in suspension, together with the solid matter it is pushing along, it will have lost all its power to cause erosion. If the slope is decreased, or if the matter in suspension is increased in any manner, deposits will occur. These deposits render the slope less steep at that point but steeper below, so that the action of the water beyond will make itself felt, and by digging gradually up stream tend to restore the original slope.

In some cases there is very little erosion where the current is much stronger than the cohesive power of the soil, for the reason that the beds of the streams have been almost paved with stones that have been carried along by the propulsive action of the water.

This has in many cases produced an equilibrium between the resistance and the destroying power; in others the equilibrium has been brought about in a different way by the same natural agents. The current of a stream will very often go on causing erosion until arrested by some rocky obstacle that determines a waterfall. These falls cause breaks in the action of the water not only in stopping the erosive action in its upward march, but also in checking the velocity of the water. Then, as basins are often formed just above the falls and where the current is much less swift, matter in suspension is deposited, so that when the stream is swollen it has material to work upon, before starting to make the original slope steeper.

The subject divides itself broadly into two branches – the extinction of torrents and the correction of the water courses in valleys. In the extinction of the torrents various plans are resorted to, which give the current greater propulsive power, but at the same time they render necessary greater protection of the bed. This may be done by incasing it within walls of masonry (though other materials are used in some cases) or shortening meandering portions. In the latter plan the slope is increased, the fall being the same for a shorter distance. Currents that have been making dangerous deposits at certain points and causing dangerous erosions at others are treated by the above systems until the danger has disappeared or the money has given out. When the erosive action of the water is already too great, the material carried and then deposited by the stream is often made use of to consolidate banks that are threatened. Spurs are built out from such banks, and this tends to mend matters not only in forcing the water to take another channel, but also in causing deposits at the foot of the menaced bank.

The destructive effects of the current are arrested when the streams are not important by means of dams made of trunks of trees and wooden stakes, often strengthened roughly with stones. Where the streams are larger, and where the erosive action can not be modified by enlarging the channel, as is the case in many gorges, it is necessary to make an artificial bed for the stream and at times to supplement this by masonry dams. The dams are not permanent in their effects, for as soon as the basin immediately above the dam has been filled with deposits and the original slope of the stream has re-established itself, the products of the erosion pass over the dam. They prove, however, of great utility at times of large freshets by causing deposits which are subsequently carried down in much smaller quantities. This prevents the disasters that would be caused by sudden enormous deposits when the streams are swollen.

The prospect for many a narrow valley would be a sad one indeed if means had not been taken to prevent the lateral erosions so common with the mountain torrents and so productive of landslips. Where the stream has provided itself with a stony bed on which to roll, it often tries to do damage by leaving the stones and attacking the earthy banks. It is in these cases that the danger has proved so insidious; for until disasters actually occurred, in many instances, the undermining effect of the water was not suspected, being entirely hidden from view.

The most economical way of combating such cases is by making use of those points that by their formation arrest the erosive action. This is done by re-enforcing them in such manner as to produce a series of natural steps. The upward march of the excavating action of the water is stopped at least partially and temporarily at each step. Such a method is of great advantage when it is necessary to delay a more costly correction for financial reasons.

The experience gained since a connected system was begun in the management of the water courses has been of incalculable value, and many have been the landslips arrested and prevented by seeking their causes in the hidden erosive action of a small stream. In still another manner does the water threaten the mountain sides, and that is by permeating the soil (which is thus rendered much heavier), until it reaches a bed of rock or other layer that it can not penetrate. There it forms a layer of slippery mud on which the soil above slides bodily down. The method pursued in such cases is sometimes that of a ditch dug to the impermeable layer, sometimes that of a drain. In both cases there may or may not be small feeding ditches. Another plan which appears very contradictory of what has just been said is also employed. This consists in preventing, by means of horizontal trenches, the water from flowing off on the surface in the regions above the timber line. The water is forced to percolate through the soil and so reaches the wooded portions, where it would permeate anyhow, much more gradually than otherwise. The soil thus escapes the enormous increase of pressure due to the sudden absorption of great quantities of water, and consequently is less in danger of leaving its fastenings.

One of the most difficult of the problems that these torrents give rise to is that of their control where they suddenly enter a valley, and where the slope is consequently greatly decreased. The decrease of current entailed causes the deposit of stones and material at the mouth of the gorge, and the water then spreads itself over the valley. This occurs more or less regularly with certain torrents that are usually dry and where it is impracticable to prevent the erosions above. It then becomes necessary to build a stone canal from the mouth of the gorge to the principal water course of the valley. As this must be built on the alluvion (which presents the surface of a cone), it is often higher than the rest of the valley, and one may find other small canals for the draining of the valley passing under the larger one and meeting the principal stream below. A similar action to that of the torrent on entering the valley is that of a stream with a rapid current emptying into one whose current is slower. Here the deposits will at times force the smaller stream to seek another channel, and it frequently occurs that the correction moves the mouth of the stream a considerable distance.

The manner in which the streams in the valleys are made to aid in their own correction is most interesting. Whereas in the mountains it is usually desirable to decrease the erosive action of the water, in the valleys the contrary is the case, as the deposits in the lowlands are as dangerous to life and property as was their abstraction above. The great desideratum to be attained is to have the mountain streams arrive in the valleys in a purely liquid condition, and to give the valley streams the power to carry to the lakes any material they may be so unfortunate as to have taken in charge. To accomplish this latter purpose, the sinuosities of the streams are often reduced to straight lines, an increase of slope being thus secured. The new channels are made of a cross-section to enable the water to carry on its alluvion and silt. Where great freshets occur it is necessary to guarantee the artificial beds against the enormous increase of the water's destructive action.

The usual plan is that of having the cross-section of the stream with a deep depression in the center. This depression is of dimensions to insure a proper flow under ordinary conditions. When the stream becomes swollen it overflows the borders of this depression and spreads over a much larger area until the banks proper are encountered. This sudden increase of cross-section reduces the velocity of the water and consequently its destructive power. When the water of a stream is turned from its old channel into the new one that has been prepared for it, the operation is generally very gradually performed, so as to enable the water to fill up the old bed as much as possible by depositing its silt.

A plan pursued with much success is that of building out from the high bank of a stream (which it is desired to confine into a narrower channel) insubmersible spurs, stopping at the points where the new bank is to be situated. The water flowing in between these spurs deposits its dirt and gravel, and gradually builds up the new bank. In many cases the ends of the spurs are connected by low artificial banks of masonry over which the water flows. These banks retain and protect the deposits, and, when the latter have attained a sufficient depth, the artificial banks are raised to their permanent height. Still another method pursued with the same object in view is that of starting up stream and building the banks to their permanent height until a point is reached where it is desired to "fill." Here the artificial banks are left temporarily very low. The water overflows them, and the reduction of its velocity entails the deposit of its silt. When this has continued as long as necessary or practicable, the walls are raised to their permanent height along the section and the same process is repeated below. This gradual process is also very advantageous from a financial point of view. When the engineer finally reaches the mouth of the stream at one of the lakes, we should expect to find his difficulties at an end, as the lakes are usually so deep that the alluvion makes little impression on them, and their areas are such that floods are not much to be feared. But he is confronted here with a new difficulty, that of anchoring or securing the foundation of his artificial river bank. The soil is generally alluvial over a large area, and is very damp. He generally has to terminate the masonry before he reaches the less stable alluvial soil and continue the structure by means of wooden material, which retains its position much better under such circumstances and is more cheaply replaced. It would be natural to imagine that man's control of the water problem stops at this point. But not so with the Swiss; he even controls its exit from some of the lakes. This is notably the case at Geneva, where by means of ingenious dams the lake is maintained at what is deemed a proper level. When it is remembered that this lake is fifty miles long by ten broad, an idea is gained of the amount of water controlled. Every few years the level is lowered for a given period, so that repairs may be made to the walls and structures along the shores.

THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES

By JAMES COLLIER

V. – POLITICAL EVOLUTION

The law that the evolution of a colony repeats the evolution of the parent state would here be logically applied to the history of the relations between colonies and the mother country. These would be shown to have followed a similar course, though with new developments, to those of the mother country with her suzerain; and they would be carried further back and deeper down to those universal animal processes of lactation and rearing which they continue and which explain them. The gradual settlement of a new country would next be exhibited as a repetition (with necessary modifications) of the settlement of the mother country, because guided by the same general laws – that it dispossesses an earlier race, which had followed quadrupeds and birds, which had followed trees, shrubs, and grasses, which again had sown themselves along geographical lines. Chapters on both topics are unavoidably omitted. The law has now to be applied to the political, industrial, and social evolution of colonies. In so wide a subject only aperçus are possible.

There are traces in several colonies of a state anterior to the establishment of a settled government. According to the unloving Hobbes, such a state is necessarily one of war, and it is sometimes that; according to the humane Rousseau, it is one of peace, and, to the credit of human nature, it is oftener that. There were English settlers in Pennsylvania before the Swedes arrived. The first immigrants to Plymouth found predecessors on the coast who owed no allegiance. Seventy years after the foundation of North Carolina the inhabitants still led the lives of freemen in the woods. Prior to 1702 New Jersey was considered one of those provinces "where no regular government had been established." The Tasmanian farmers who colonized Victoria lived for some time without any form of government, and lived peacefully. Pastoralists were found on the Canterbury plains before the advent of the Pilgrims, and were content. When the Pilgrims got into collision with the central government, they said bitterly that they would do better with none. Where it is otherwise the circumstances are exceptional. Gold and silver fields everywhere are at first, and often to the last, scenes of wild disorder, where a man's safety depends on his ability to defend himself. Escaped Australian convicts, runaway sailors, adventurers, and natives made up a community which turned the natural paradise of the Bay of Islands into an earthly hell. Parts of Texas in very recent days were the seat of anarchy. Government soon arrives on the spot in the shape of the Texas Rangers, the Draconian gold-fields mounted police, or a royal governor. Or an organized body of immigrants absorbs previous settlers and evolves from within itself all the agencies of government. On one or other of these two types all colonial societies have been built up. The patriarchal theory of Filmer is realized in those colonies – the great majority – where the government is clothed with power delegated by the sovereign of the mother country. The socialist theory of Locke is embodied in the New England colonies; in the Carolina "Association" of 1719; in the resolutions of the Liberal Association of Canada in 1841, which issued in the compact between the crown and the Canadian people; in the New Zealand whalers in 1840, governed by their own laws; in the New Zealand Company's settlements (with a social contract previously drawn up by the passengers, as by those of the Mayflower); and in the colonies of Otago and Canterbury, and New Australia in Paraguay. Two intermediate groups have a transitional existence. Many colonies have been founded by commercial companies whose collective history might be written in two lines – inception of vast enterprises, partial commercial success, great collateral benefits, ruinous loss of capital, surrender of charter to the crown. A set of colonies peculiar to the United States were established by one or more proprietaries, from whose voluntary concessions the form of government was derived, but most of these merged, after a series of conflicts, in the popular group. They were respectively bastard royal and bastard charter colonies.

From the origin of a colony is deducible its whole political and social structure. Colonies of royal foundation, by a kind of moral pangenesis, tend to reproduce all parts of the mother country that are suitable to the new environment – its inequalities of rank, governors who are the image of the sovereign, an executive, legislative, and judicature that are the delegation of his authority. But these institutions must grow; they can not be made. The attempt to create an aristocracy in Carolina, and the proposal to manufacture one in New South Wales, necessarily failed. Yet in both countries one grew or is growing up. In the South there was an untitled aristocracy, with the aristocratic temper, exclusive institutions, and four distinct classes (the descendants of the lords of the manor, villeins or tenants, bond-servants, and slaves, who had a brief existence in Virginia, Carolina, and Maryland) – planters, overseers, mean whites, and negro slaves; the fall of Richmond saw the happy ending of all that. In the British colonies, as in England, there is an increasing passion for titles, and of about sixty grades in the Byzantine hierarchy of the English monarchy at least eleven have been transplanted to colonial soil. But it is on one condition, abroad as at home – that honor shall be divorced from power. In England the nobility is being edged out of office, and on Lord Salisbury's grave might be written, "The last of the nobles" – the last who governed his country. In her colonies one premier after another resolutely refuses the forbidden dignity that would banish him from the ministerial Eden. The same point has been reached in the United States from the opposite side. Most of the charter and some of the proprietary colonies developed into republican societies, with political equality as their badge, a popular legislature, an elected judiciary, and a half-elected executive. Side by side with this democracy of power there has grown up in the great cities – Philadelphia, Boston, New York – an aristocracy of blood, culture, or dollars. This aristocracy of fashion – as in France and England, so in the United States and (on a small scale) in Australia – consoles itself for lifelong exclusion from public affairs by addicting itself to literature, art, philanthropy, and such like. But these are only its recreations. Its chief use is to exist, to exhibit the civilization of a people at its flower, to give pleasure to others and to itself. The proportion of this element to the rest of the population will measure the age of the community.

The core of the executive is the governor. The governor of the monarchical colonies is the deputy of the sovereign, and the story of his authority is the story in brief of the royal prerogative. The governors of the Spanish colonies arrogated and abused a power far more despotic than a Spanish king's. The French Governor of Illinois ruled with absolute sway. The first Governor of New South Wales exercised unparalleled powers. He could inflict five hundred lashes and impose a five-hundred-pound fine; could sentence to death, execute, or pardon. He regulated trade. He fixed prices, wages, and customs duties. All the labor in the colony was at his disposal. He could bestow grants of land. He appointed to all offices of honor or emolument. The administration of justice was exclusively in his hands. The colonists were his subjects. He was practically irresponsible. Thus an Anglo-Saxon community can take on the characters of an Oriental satrapy. It can also become a military despotism. For some years after the departure of one governor and the deposition of another the government of the colony was in the hands, or under the feet, of the officers of the New South Wales Corps, who ruled it as the Sultan rules Turkey. The stage of pure absolutism, which is necessitated in a colony, as in the mother country, by the existence of a small band of immigrants in the midst of a hostile indigenous population, or of a small number of free settlers among a convict populace, is succeeded by that of limited absolutism. The authority of the governor is checked by the appointment of a council. Most of the early North American crown colonies were at this stage. It answers to England under the later Tudors, and, as there, left ample scope for oppression. Occasionally it blossomed or withered into prodigies of tyranny on a small scale, as in the too celebrated Andros. Sir James Craig, so lately as the beginning of the nineteenth century, treated his Canadian Parliament as superciliously as a Stuart. In New Zealand there were continual complaints that a certain governor had more absolute power than a sovereign. In South Australia and South Africa the same governor ruled like an emperor, his council not thwarting but aggrandizing his authority. This second preconstitutional stage is often unduly prolonged in colonies, as it commonly is in the mother country, on the pretext of an enemy on the frontier or of troubles with the natives, but really because of the forceful character of a governor who is unwilling to lay down the dignity he may not have been overwilling to take up. Its persistence in the North American colonies can only be explained on Haeckel's principle that the development of ancestral species is followed in the development of the embryo. Despotism in the Old World was the parent of despotism in the New. There is no other reason why colonies ripe for self-government, like Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, should have been oppressed by such men as Andros, Cornbury, and Harvey. The stage is ended by the granting of a constitution or by a successful rebellion. The governor's personal force will then be the measure of his power. The sagacious and resolute Lord Elgin asserted that he had twice the authority in constitutional Canada that he had enjoyed in Jamaica. Such a governor is the colonial analogue of Queen Victoria, who, in consequence of her association with the Prince Consort, the length of her reign, and her strong character, has prolonged monarchical influence. But the day of such sovereigns is passing; the day of such governors is past. The office is by no means shorn of its prerogatives. The governor, like the sovereign, selects his prime minister, and the act may have serious consequences; the appeal of the minister for election as leader by his party shows the blending of the popular with the monarchical strain, but it is little more than formal. As George III in 1783, and William IV in 1834, arbitrarily dismissed the Whigs, a Governor of Newfoundland in 1861 dismissed his ministry; in 1858 the Governor of New South Wales had resolved to dismiss his; and it is not many months since Mr. Rhodes was cashiered. Like the sovereign, the governor sometimes refuses to grant a dissolution. Like the Governor General of Canada last year, or the Governor of New Zealand a few years ago, he may refuse to appoint senators – successfully in the one case or only to be bowled over by the Colonial Office in the other. Beyond these real but rarely exercised prerogatives he has little else to do than sign his ministers' documents. He ought to interfere in certain cabinet crises, but dares not. His power, like that of the sovereign, is reduced to a shadow. The premier of the colony is now its working king.

As the governor's authority wanes, his dignity waxes. After 1632 a viceroy of high rank was sent to New Spain. In 1867 Disraeli, half genius and half charlatan, commenced a policy of ostentation by announcing that only those would in future be appointed colonial governors who had been "born in the purple," or were peers, and notwithstanding two or three Liberal reactions the policy has been confirmed, in regard to all the more important colonies, by the demands of the colonists. On arriving in his dominions the new ruler has a royal reception. He becomes the head of the ceremonial system in the colony, and if he ceases to govern he reigns (according to Bagehot's theory of the monarchy) by impressing the popular imagination. And as loyalty to the Queen is passing into loyalty to the imperial tradition, so is loyalty to her representative being transmuted into the pride of imperial connection.

The governor completes the parallel with sovereignty by undergoing all its vicissitudes. As monarchs have abdicated, been imprisoned, banished, restored, tried, and beheaded, colonial governors have resigned, been imprisoned, expelled, recalled, restored, impeached, dismissed, and hanged, and in both sets of cases for similar reasons. They have resigned because of ill usage at the hands of their ministers, because things were done in their absence of which they disapproved, or because they were entrapped into approving of their ministers' wrongdoing. La Bourdonnais was sent to the Bastille, Andros was imprisoned for tyranny in Massachusetts, and in North Carolina it was the "common practice" to resist and imprison their governors. Depositions were frequent in the North American colonies. An oppressive Governor of Virginia was banished to England, but sent back; a Governor of New South Wales was deposed for rectitude by a military mutiny and shipped to Tasmania; a Governor of New Zealand was placed on board a ship for England because he had excited the ill will of a powerful company, and had indiscreetly realized the dream of free traders by making the colony a free port. As Pericles dreaded being ostracized, early Governors of New South Wales feared being placed under arrest. Recall is the sentence that governors of British colonies had most to shun in the days when they were still irresponsible. The first four Governors of Australia, and possibly the sixth, were lied out of office. One was recalled because of the financial embarrassments of his colony and his own devotion to science; another, on the better grounds of tyranny and red tape. A Governor of the Cape of Good Hope was recalled because he was unpopular. Another governor of that colony was recalled for incorrigible insubordination, and again, when he had been pardoned and sent to a more distant colony, for hopeless incompatibility. How so serious a step may be contrived by a mere clerk in the Colonial Office may be read in the autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor, who procured the recall of an obnoxious governor by submitting to a compliant Secretary of State a dispatch recalling him. An outbreak of public indignation, like that against Governor Eyre, may be needed to bring about the same result. Dupleix and Frontenac fell before the machinations of their enemies, and the former was allowed to die in misery. Hastings was impeached. Articles equivalent to impeachment were drawn up against a Governor of New South Wales, who, like Clive, suffered the indignity of having his administration scrutinized by a committee of the House of Commons. Lastly, as a single English king was brought to the block, so has a single governor, and he the creature of an insurrection, expiated his rebellion on the scaffold.

The election of governors recalls the election of Frankish kings, but really repeats that of the governors of commercial companies; how powerful such elected functionaries may become is shown by the chairman of an English railway company and the American boss. Leaders like Smith or Winthrop, Cargill of Otago, or Godley of Canterbury, who give to young colonies cohesion and the power to survive, or carry them through perils, are their rulers by indefeasible sovereignty; in form they may, as in Massachusetts, be only the presidents of the company out of which the colony has sprung. Re-elected for twenty years, like Winthrop, or thirteen, like Endicott, they may confer on the office a duration equal to that of inheritance, and may show an independence greater than a hereditary or an appointed officer can safely assume. Creators of colonies, like Baltimore, Penn, and Oglethorpe, repeat a type that must be rare in history, if indeed they do not originate the noblest of all types of ruler, and are kings by a diviner right than that of any known sovereign.

The governor being the brain (or the active portion of the brain) of the body politic, the administration is his limbs, and expands from him with such improvements as new circumstances permit and such modifications as they require, in the same manner as it had done from the sovereign in the mother country. Not that each colony passes through all the stages through which the latter pass; that depends on the date at which the colony was given off. Massachusetts and Virginia alone of the North American colonies, New South Wales and Tasmania alone of the Australasian, described most of them; in the younger colonies the earlier ones were dropped. Thus (to mention a single point) the office of Colonial Secretary (who was originally the governor's secretary, as the Secretary for Ireland, till the other day, was only the Lord Lieutenant's secretary) differentiates into several ministries, as the department of Secretary of State had differentiated in England. An anomaly is worth noting. In the United States, where the whole people is the fountain of power, the ministers are the servants of the President, appointed and dismissed by him. In England, while they are still in theory her Majesty's ministers, and the Prime Minister is nominally selected by the sovereign, by a remarkable transformation they have become the servants of the legislature – that is, of the people. The two countries have exchanged institutions, as Hamlet and Laertes exchanged rapiers. The explanation is historical. The United States parted from the development of Britain at a time when the executive was, far more than now, independent of the legislature and dependent on the sovereign. The framers of the Constitution of the United States, looking at the British Constitution from without, and ignoring the subtle checks and balances that gave the lie to Montesquieu's too rigid trichotomy, petrified a still developing system, and dug a gulf between the executive and the legislature. But in England, with the growing weakness of the crown and the growing strength of the legislature, the ministers have gone over to the popular side. The younger British colonies were founded at a time when this development was already far advanced, and they have repeated the evolution. A curious consequence ensues. While in a monarchical country and its colonies a manifestation of public opinion can in a week bring the most powerful ministry to its knees, the President and ministers of a popularly governed country pursue their irresponsible course in apparent indifference to either pulpit or press.

A similar cleavage divides the legislative structure. The governor of crown colonies, like the sovereign, is at first the sole, and through his ministers to the last the chief, legislator; the legislature is created by concessions wrung from him, and its history is the record of successive limitations of his authority. In charter colonies the legislature is the creation of the people, and the laws are made by its deputies. A single tolerably perfect example of each type is chosen. The early history of New South Wales is one of the best preserved specimens in the museum of political paleontology. During its earliest years the governor was as absolute as the first Norman sovereigns. William Rufus might ask: "You Taillebois, what have you to propose in this arduous matter?.. Potdevin, what is your opinion of the measure?" And Philip, hunter or king, might as unceremoniously solicit the advice of the chaplain or the commander of the forces, but they were under no obligation to take it; and the earliest laws, like the capitularies of Charlemagne, were public orders or proclamations. Under the sixth governor, when civilian officials had arrived, his authority received its first limitation: a small council was instituted, consisting of the chief justice, the attorney general, and the archdeacon of Sydney. A few years later the council was enlarged by the inclusion of new officials, and an equal number of unofficial citizens, who were, however, nominated by the crown. So far, we are still in the twelfth English century. In 1828 began fourteen years of agitation for an elective council, and with 1842 we arrive at the colonial Magna Charta. The concession had hardly been made when, with the influx of fresh settlers, another agitation for all the rights of self-government was begun. It was complicated with the convict question, as the politics of the United States was long complicated with the slavery question, but was not settled with, though it may have been accelerated by, the settlement of that in 1848. Eight years later full self-government was granted, largely through the agency of one man. As a Wentworth had aided in subverting the liberties of Englishmen, a second Wentworth redeemed the honor of his name by proving the Shaftesbury of a second revolution, and procuring freedom for their Australian descendants. Subsequent developments repeat the English reforms of 1832, 1867, and 1881. Thus the colony described in less than a century the evolution which it had taken the mother country fourteen hundred years to accomplish. Younger colonies, omitting the earlier stages, ran the same distance in far shorter periods.

They are not only repeating, they are anticipating, the history of the parent state. Female suffrage has been conceded in two Australasian colonies, and it is inevitable in the rest. The domination of a socialist democracy is far advanced in the two former. The referendum, or direct appeal to the people on specific issues, is on the eve of general enactment. Ministries elected by the legislature are possibly in the near future. Thus legislative bodies which sprang from the crown are more democratic than those that sprang from the people. Withal, the former retain an anomalous vestige of their origin. While the business of legislation in Congress is necessarily conducted by members who have no official connection with the executive, as it was originally in the English Parliament, the British and colonial ministries claim an ever-increasing monopoly of legislation on all questions of any magnitude. It has long been recognized as impossible for a private member to carry through the House of Commons a measure of any consequence, and a colonial ministry arrests the progress of a successful bill by intimating that the subject of it can only be legislated upon by the Government.

The free involution of a legislature from below is naturally more rapid than its reluctant devolution from above. The swift development of the Massachusetts Company into the Massachusetts Legislature has been ably traced by Professor Fiske, who is a sociologist as well as a historian. The attempt to transact public business at a primary meeting of all the freemen in the colony, assembling four times a year, repeats the old Witenagemot, and failed for the same reason as that died out – because, from the expansion of the population, the assemblage was impracticable. It needed only four years for the freemen to acquire the right of sending deputies to the General Court, and only fifteen to bring about a permanent division into two Houses. Other early colonies passed through the same stages; colonies of later foundation took up the development at the bicameral stage. It is the history of a land and colonization company of those days, or of a railway company in ours. The directors become a Senate and the body of shareholders the popular House; the statutes of the company are its constitution and the by-laws its legislation. The origin of charter legislatures in a company explains a parallel anomaly to that in crown legislatures. While the representative Houses in British colonial legislatures have followed the House of Commons in gathering all power into their own hands, in states descended from the charter companies the House of Representatives has been losing, while the Senate has gained authority. In both cases the apparent anomaly is the outcrop of a deeper law. The ministry in the one case and the senate in the other are each the embodiment of that continuous social germ-plasm to which the popular will of the hour stands in the same relation as the individual life does to the physiological germ-plasm; and, as the latter is the true substance of the body, the social germ-plasm is the substance of society, incarnating its permanent interests, and therefore justly overriding the cries, the whims, the passions of the hour.

The same dichotomy is visible in the colonial judicature. The paterfamilias, the village elder, the tribal chief, the king, possess and personally exercise an undelegated jurisdiction. Fully twenty years ago a sociological worker surprised a historian of some pretensions, who was conversant with the mere events of his special period, by informing him that the practice of English kings to preside in their own courts of justice came as far down as that very period – the reign of James I. This prerogative was transmitted with the other attributes of royalty to the governors of crown colonies, who "generally acted as judges, sitting in the highest court." A New Jersey Cincinnatus revived primitive simplicities by hearing causes seated on a tree stump in his fields. The successive delegations of this power repeat the necessary concessions that created the English judiciary. Side by side with the royal prerogative grew up a popular jurisdiction which developed into the jury; and it would be worth while to compare the acquisition of this constitutional right (for example, in Connecticut and New South Wales) with its history in England. Out of this element, and also as a corollary from the election of a governor who was chief judge, came the practice of electing judges in the North American colonies. It was by no means confined to the charter colonies. Nowhere was the determination toward an elective judiciary more noticeable than in Pennsylvania, whose proprietary was its feudal sovereign. It may be historically explained from the corrupt and servile judicature of the age when these colonies were founded. The attachment to the old system in contemporary British colonies may also be explained from the very different point in the history of the mother country when they were given off, when the talent, the purity, and independence of the bench had become the pride of Englishmen, and the judges were Baconian in everything but the taking of bribes. The English and (naturally in a far less degree) the colonial courts still show traces of their royal origin in the antiquated wig and gown, the arrogance of the judges, their haughty point of honor – "contempt of court," and their aristocratic bias. These are counterbalanced by the increasing strength of the popular element. A hopeful bill was a few years ago introduced into a colonial legislature restraining judges from commenting on evidence. A mere act of Parliament would have as much effect on lawyers' loquacity as Mrs. Partington's mop had on the Atlantic. It is, nevertheless, in the direction of restricting the powers of the judges that the more radical colonies are moving. In one southern community certain causes may be tried by a judge with a jury of four, who will probably rise into assessors, and in another that important step is possibly on the point of being taken. The courageous Premier of South Australia, who lately defied the entire English medical profession, has now taken in hand his own not less formidable guild. He proposes that "in proceedings under certain acts the bench is to consist of a judge of the Supreme Court with two lay assessors, one appointed by each party to the suit"; and counselors are peremptorily excluded from such proceedings. In certain other cases litigants may submit statements of their differences to judges who will adjudicate without the intervention of counsel. Thus the same middle point may be reached from opposite termini. A series of levelings down may bring judicatures of royal origin to the same stage as popular jurisdictions have reached by a gradual leveling up. The courts will then unite the majesty of the law, whose "voice is the harmony of the world," with an impartiality and inexpensiveness that will insure to every citizen the enjoyment of the most elementary of all rights – the right to justice.

Side by side with the process of differentiation within colonies rose up an integration of colonies with one another, which also repeats the history of the mother country. The same principles of authority and consent, again in unequal proportions, are blended here. It was by conquest that the seven old English kingdoms were welded into a united England, Strathclyde incorporated, Ireland annexed. By force disguised as bribery, aided by the patriotic or interested efforts of a few nobles and placemen and in opposition to the will of the inhabitants, Scotland and Ireland were joined to England. Some four or five groups of British colonies have reduplicated, or are now reduplicating, a parallel development. In North America it was preceded and accompanied by altercations among the different colonies. Boundary disputes repeat old English intertribal struggles. Tariff wars are now waged, and commercial reciprocity treaties contracted, between contemporary colonies. New Haven and Connecticut, which consisted of towns federated by consent, were united by force. Voluntary alliances against the Indians or to conquer Canada, or involuntary unions under despotic rulers, associated larger or smaller North American groups from Maine to Maryland. The loose confederation of 1781 was too voluntary to last. The final federation that superseded it had a large element of latent force mixed with consent. It was hardly less a conquest of the North by the South than that of the Heptarchy by Wessex. The Constitution is a monument of Southern ascendency. So it was that, for seventy years off and on, the United States was governed by a Southern oligarchy, whether under the hegemony of Virginia or of South Carolina. The dominion of Canada means (even under a French premier) the dominion of Ontario, with Quebec bribed, and Newfoundland not bribed enough, to enter. In 1876 the ten New Zealand provinces were amalgamated under a central Government which for many years remained that of the earlier-settled North Island. A federation of the Australian colonies planned seven years ago under the auspices of protectionist Victoria, is likely to succeed under the leadership of free-trading New South Wales. Mr. Rhodes is advising the federation of the British colonies of South Africa; forty years ago a federation of all the South African states was designed by Sir George Grey, then high commissioner, but with little patriotism and still less wisdom, for at that time it necessarily implied the dominance of the Dutch element. In 1846 that far-seeing statesman had projected a union of the South Sea Islands with New Zealand. Only four years ago the same aged prophet of federation, with an eloquence inspired by the theme, outlined to a Liberal audience a scheme for federating the English-speaking peoples. These are dreams; but the dreams of to-day are the realities of to-morrow, and every step taken toward the realization of them is itself a gain.