EFFECT OF SUNSHINE ON BRITISH COLONISTS.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 46, 6 July 1908, Page 2

EFFECT OF SUNSHINE ON BRITISH COLONISTS.

Some years ago the Hon. W. Fortescue contributed to the “Nineteenth Century” an interesting article on the influence of climate on race, his point being that the Eng-lish-speaking man will lose his distinctive British character in a hot country. The Britisher is the product of his fogs, but put him under a blue sky, and the sunshine will soon take all that is British out of him. This, shortly stated, is Mr. Fortescue's contention, and it is worth while to look at the facts on which he bases it. New Zealand, he says, is more like England than any of our possessions, although the latitude is more that of Italy than of England. But although it has been peopled quite recently, it is continually fed by a stream of emigrants from the old country, the inhabitants are rapidly undergoing a process of alteration, they are being dis-Englished in respect to mental characteristics. The young New ZeaAandors are long and slender, they are acquiring a colonial twang, and are picking up a hideous cockney dialect aTid an abominably corrupt pronunciation. The New Zealand character is modified by the New Zealand sun. The born and bred New Zealander has a delight in existence for itself. Under their blue skies—

Life is brighter and happier to them. They cease to be restless, glloomy, and anxious, and become cheerful and light-hearted, more like the southern races of Europe.

! Then again they have no winter such as ours, to teach them endurance, providence, industry, and a certain crude but valuable brutality; hence it comes to pass that— Already the dominant characteristic in New Zealand is a certain joyous frivolity, a cheerful assurance that everything must either be all right or come right of itself sooner qr later, and that meanwhile nothing really matters very much. There is no hard winter to bring home-to peoplo 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 lie—as, indeed, they ali ready to a great extent are—cheerful, i warm-hearted, pleasure-loving, and ! optimistic.

Bearing New Zealand, Mr. Fortescue then turns tq Australia, and shakes his head over the heavy deathrate among the children in South Australia ; the business of the reproduction of the species does not show Australia in its best light. In Victoria there is an increasing desire of married women to avoid the cares of maternity, The heat is so great as to destroy much activity in work, and in Sydney the people have a limp appearance, painfully resembling that of the degenerate whites in Barbadqes. Mr. Fortescue .thinks that the white man will abandon the attempt to cultivate Australia without coloured labour, and that the Australian democracy will import coolies and live in comfort on the labour of the coloured men :

| That the white man so pampered and softened will degenerate physically I have no doubt whatever ; for he will grqw idler and idler, and less and less inclined to the physical exertion that alone can keep him in vigour.