Their Slaves, Having Known The Worst Of Life, Were Apathetic.
The Black Aboriginals Were Silent And Afraid.
The whole vast territory
was conquered with very little fighting, and the victorious army,
leaving garrisons, returned in triumph to the Delta.
What enterprise that an enlightened community may attempt is more
noble and more profitable than the reclamation from barbarism of
fertile regions and large populations? To give peace to warring tribes,
to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off
the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to plant the earliest
seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their
capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain - what more
beautiful ideal or more valuable reward can inspire human effort? The
act is virtuous, the exercise invigorating, and the result often
extremely profitable. Yet as the mind turns from the wonderful cloudland
of aspiration to the ugly scaffolding of attempt and achievement,
a succession of opposite ideas arises. Industrious races are displayed
stinted and starved for the sake of an expensive Imperialism which they
can only enjoy if they are well fed. Wild peoples, ignorant of their
barbarism, callous of suffering, careless of life but tenacious of
liberty, are seen to resist with fury the philanthropic invaders, and to
perish in thousands before they are convinced of their mistake. The
inevitable gap between conquest and dominion becomes filled with the
figures of the greedy trader, the inopportune missionary, the ambitious
soldier, and the lying speculator, who disquiet the minds of the
conquered and excite the sordid appetites of the conquerors.
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