for civilisation than by climatic conditions. Had the native Indians of Mexico and Peru been as untameable as the Araucanians were or the Apaches are, the white man could not have existed side by side with them. He must either have exterminated them or have been driven out. In fact, however, if the Indians whom Cortez or Pizarro found had been essentially warlike, they would not have been as numerous as they were, and the work of destroying them, tribe after tribe, would have been comparatively easy, as it has been easy for the people of the United States to make a clearance of Narraganset, Mohegan, Seneca, and Seminole Indians.
It is probably safe to say, that the Chinaman, the Hindoo, and the negro are in no danger of anything like the fate that overtook the aborigines of the New World at the hands of a foreign conqueror. A compact nation of 400,000,000 may be endangered by revolts like that of the Tae-Pings or that of the Mahommedans of Yunnan—for in both those cases the war waged was one of extermination—but has little to dread from a civilised power, except temporary humiliation or tribute. Now that massacres on a large scale are not sanctified by religion, there exists no reason why a conqueror if we can suppose a foreign conqueror of China—should do more than levy taxes, or exact a levy of conscripts or of forced labourers. India left to itself might be rent for a time by the war of Mussulman and Hindoo, but India is too populous for any large part of its people to be exterminated; unless indeed wars were waged in the Chinese fashion. That either Russians or Frenchmen, or indeed any European race, could colonise any province accidentally left desolate seems on the face of it impossible.
