THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1891.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8529, 1 April 1891, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1891.

Nowadays news is flashed over the globe in a few hours— important news, good or bad, welcome or unwel" come, with the intelligence ever and anon of great floods, the overflowing of rivers, so destructive in Australia and parts of America, and dreadfully worsr, in thickly-peopled of other fierce freaks of nature, like the snowdrifts that a few weeks ago swept across Europe, in Russia burying even a whole town, or nautical disasters like' the terrible one the other day of the Utopia—in view of such striking cala--mities, and what, unfortunately, are sometimes not less so, the constantly recurring announcement of mining accidents, railway accidents, conflagrations, etc., many people are apt to believe that the material world has become more unruly than it used to be. And they are equally disposed to believe that mankind must be much more wicked than a generation back, when they read how the war in Chili is now carried on, and how races claiming to be more civilized than the Chilenos can still and too often make as barbarous a figure in bellicose matters. . But the steam engine and electric wire have revolutionised means of information. A crowd of news can now come in a day, which a few years ago would only have reached us at long intervals, and a great deal of which would not have come at all. Very many occurrences that might then be diplomatically concealed, cannot in these inquisitive days be hidden away. Human nature is certainly not worse now than a generation back, though we may well wish it were a great deal better. It hardly lies with us, however, to hold up our hands in egotistical astonishment at what is done by the rival belligerents in Chili, in face of the contemporary; misdeeds of men of our own and other European stock in Africa, and which have got into lurid light even from Darkest Africa; and again, when we have so recently read of the performance of certain of our American cousins, after a battle with the Indians, in shooting down many of the latter although they had surrendered. But what we may reasonably wonder at is that so soon after the Pan-American Congress, held in the opening months of last year, and which had for a leading object arbitration to prevent quarrels, no less than half-a-dozen of the Central and South American States which sent delegates to that Congress, and endorsed that particular proposal, should almost immediately after have ♦aken to fighting with each other or to internal strife —the furious struggle now raging within Chili being the latest illustration. And that sudden and widespread outburst of hostilities was the more remarkable because those States were previously at peace for an unusual length of time—no fighting having occurred between them since that sanguinary struggle a few years before in which Peru and Bolivia were in the field against Chili. Throughout what was once Spanish America, the aboriginal race, miscalled Indian, is: the basis of population ; while in the countries with a torrid climateincluding Brazil, once a Portu-

guese possession— Negro element, which'-originated with the Import of, slaves from Africa, is likewise extensive. The descendants of Europeans are a very small minority. 'It; is easy to understand that where there is such a mixture of* races,, and the mass of the people ignorant, the republican institutions adopted when those countries be-came independent, do not fit in jWell, and afford too ready, a stage for unscrupulous adventurers. ; Brazil was comparatively ■ < free .from the turmoil thus created, -having" been until recently an Empire, and so with less scope in its Government for personal ambition. Of course, ; what would best suit those primitive populations would be a benevolent despotism, if such a.thing could continue to exist, which it cannot. Such a ruler could not so easily J transmit to a successor his benevolence as his despotism; Jasper Rodriguez de Francia played the part of such a noble, ruler for Paraguay, when in 1814 he became Dictator of the Republic then set up there. The half-million of Paraguayans were almost exclusively of the Indian nation of the Guaranis, and Francia, adopted as the keystone of: his policy the complete • exclusion of foreigners, a system which, if introduced in Karotonga and neighbouring islands, just now before our public attention, might save from extinction the aborigines there. An occasional , stranger who—like the English traveller Mansfield, about 1840—was permitted to enter Paraguay, found a most pleasing condition of things. The people were well-to-do, contented and happy, living under a system*, of management which suited the Indian race well, and had a resemblance in spirit to that in ancient Peru under the Incas. Of course there are opposite stories as to how the catastrophe came about that befel Paraguay before 1870, and many years after Francia was dead. The neighbouring Statesthe Argentine and Brazil and Uruguaywere ; angry at the continued isolation o»: Paraguay, and not being allowed to trade with it. They assigned as reason for their hostile league, that the younger Lopez, then Dictator of Paraguay, was inspired with the ambition to play the conquerorciting as evidence the warlike preparation which he declared was done in view of their expected attack. From the Arctic zone to the Straits of Magellan the red men are a martial race. In the struggle that then ensued, the Guaranis fought heroically against tremendous odds, and when finally overpowered, most of the men had fallen, and numbers of the women had also served in the ranks. Next year and the year after there is to be much commemoration of the discovery of the Western Hemisphere, but it should be humiliating to Europe to ', reflect that there are countries in that hemisphere far more backward and barbarous than they were when it was discovered four hundred years ago, and when it had civilised native empires. At least one of those empires, Peru, fulfilled what certainly ought to be considered some of the principal objects of civilisation—namely a state of things in which with varied practical scientific eminence, there was an absence of poverty, a universality of marriages, and the nation at large well organised, well to do/ contented and happy. I