G

THE BARBARISMS OF CIVILIZATION.

From "The Contemporary Review," June 1879.

UIZOT attempted to fix the meaning of the word Civilization by an elaborate induction, and concluded that its essential meaning is Progress. But to many minds progress will appear harder to define than civilization; such a definition is certainly obscurum per obscurius. Far more obvious it is to look to the history of the word Civilization. It is a modern development out of the verb Civilize, which, of course, meant nothing but to make civil. Thus we are thrown back on to the adjective Civil, Latin Civilis. If we can rightly expound this, we can hardly fail to interpret Civilize aright.

Notoriously a Civilis animus is the opposite of a Regius animus, which to the Latins suggested the claim of lordship and privilege, nay, a spirit haughty and high-handed. On the contrary, he who was Civilis had the qualities of a Civis, the virtues of a citizen especially, he treated other men as his equals, his peers, and claimed no superiority; hence the popular English idea of Civility. Not only so, but he was a good citizen in a larger sense; ready to sustain the public welfare by wisdom and energy at the expense of personal sacrifices. Surely we need not hesitate to accept as a true interpretation, that to be "civilized" means to become thus fit for citizenship. If we try to step further back, and ask, What was the primitive idea of the word Civis with the Romans? our ignorance of early Latin embarrasses us. Yet in other cases also (whatever be the cause) the Welsh or the Irish language gives indirect suggestion. Here we find that the Welsh Cyf (sounded Kiv) is comparable to Greek av and Latin Con, Cum. Words beginning with Cyf occupy twenty columns of Richard's Welsh Dictionary. Cyfalle means conjux, husband or wife, a partner, a fit match. Cyfail means a friend,

a comrade, alter idem. This reminds us that those who were full Spartan citizens were called of poor, the equals, the peers. By such analogies the present writer is persuaded that the idea of CIVES among the Sabines, from whom it probably

came into Latin, was Partners and Equals in the community. Out of this the sense of the adjective Civilis flows naturally, and comprises the notions of "fraternal, just, and courteous."

Now, if the attainment of such qualities be (as the writer believes) Civilization, it is only in spurious civilization that barbarity can inhere and in this sense must the motto at the head of this article be interpreted. It is not here denied that there has been Progress (in the high and true sense) accompanying the national changes both in England and in all Europe; indeed, when there is occasion for it (as in a certain controversy there is), to recount the marks of such progress is easy enough. Yet, wherever a national history lies open to us, it is a familiar fact that its earlier barbarism had its own virtues as well as its vices, and that in its later stage new vices came in, or even the old ones under new pretences; so that at last, in spite of the progress of which it might justly boast, the Civitas broke in pieces mainly through the failure of the Civilis animus. From no other cause does the vain talk of Socialism now gain plausibility and influence, than from a perception, an inward sense, that such is our present danger. If we will not look honestly into the face of facts, a fundamental discontent, not the less formidable because its claims are vague, may gain great and dangerous prevalence.

But in speaking of our barbarisms the argument must be confined to this United Kingdom, and nearly to matters which public opinion either does not censure or has even approved by law and established as systematic. Unless we thus limited ourselves it might seem doubtful where we should stop and whence we could hope for a remedy. Unhappily the range of facts to be considered is far too ample, even when limited as above. From what point shall we begin on a wide and varied topic? Perhaps from our neglects.

While population is scant over an area of which few know the limits, lawless freedom can do no harm against the force of Nature. If a stream be polluted by wanderers, the pollution is quickly carried away, and the evil is transitory. If trees be lavishly cut for firewood, the forest does not miss them. If their trunks impede a water-way, a new channel is presently opened. If large game be killed and much of the carcase left to putrefy, the poisoned air does not reach far. Man is not yet powerful enough to improve the country; therefore neither to mar nor ruin it. But when population increases, new dangers arise

not those of which alone Malthus and the spurious followers of Malthus talk, but-danger lest one spoil the air, the water, and the land for another; danger also lest one seize for himself more land than he can use, to the damage of many others. Even very rude tribes soon discern these dangers; our earliest common law denounced the practices which involved them; but local mischiefs can only be averted or redressed by locally vigilant authority; central power has plenty besides to do. Among ourselves there has been, and there is, manifold and barbarous neglect.

It is not at all rare to find the side of a mountain or high hill thickly timbered as you traverse a road, until of a sudden the timber fails, and you see only thin rocky soil, with tufts of gorse and grass. On examining you discover the ground to be just as poor even where trees and bushes grow thick; but a wall encloses them. The difference is only that within the wall the land is private property, outside it is common. The law, as administered by the rich, has not defended the woods which belonged to the public, but has permitted each greedy individual to despoil them. In consequence the natural wood long ago disappeared, except where defended as private property. Continental countries have defenders of the public forests. We might have had defenders, appointed not by any central power, but by each parish, if our originally well-planned local institutions had been cherished and developed. Every wardmote, holden in the common interests of the people, might have been a public school and fountain of local sentiment. With little or no expense the people themselves would have restrained the offences of their own order: but there is now little to preserve; commons have been swept away, and public footpaths too, under cover of new laws, the rich rivalling and surpassing by far the encroachments of the poor.

Under English notions of freedom the same mischief has for a long time been going on in English colonies, or colonies so called -as, for instance, the Mauritius. This island was captured by the British in 1810. Since its sugar has been admitted into England on equality with West Indian sugar, the blind eagerness of trade has done its worst to deform a beautiful spot. Nature is still too powerful for man; yet an old resident thus writes: "Fruit, once abundant, is now scarce and high-priced. The beautiful woods, rich in a tangle of gay flowering trees and gigantic lianes, are now to be seen only in a few of the more

rocky places. Naked stumps and rows of stiff cane replace them. Even the prettily-wooded environs of the country-houses are too often sacrificed for the universal cane. There is not a Creole in the island but will shake his head mournfully, and tell you that his petit pays is but a shadow of its former beautiful self." Far worse than this-that is, worse than the disappearance of rice, arrowroot, manioc, yams, potatoes, cotton, indigo, most of the fruit and much of the beauty of the island —is the terrible fact, that eagerness to raise sugar led to a large importation of "coolies" (ignorant, helpless men, who often came under a misunderstanding of the contract which virtually enslaved them); and no provision being made for cleanliness in a tropical climate, this island, formerly noted for salubrity, is permanently stricken with malarious fever. A lagoon many miles in extent, on one side of the principal town, is now described as a bare expanse of fetid mud, when the tide

recedes.

The same may be said of many English sea-side resorts. Offensive details might easily be here put together. But to return to the destruction of timber. A Continental statesman of some eminence recently uttered the assertion: "The universal curse of old civilization is the wide destruction of the natural forests." He had Italy especially in view. But in Canada and the United States already the mischief is felt. One may presume that the steeper the hills the more rapid is the devastation. Often the rainfall is lessened. Also the forest which acted as a sponge no longer holds up the water, which runs off in flood instead of sustaining full streams all through the year. It is well if these floods do not carry off the soil from the surface, leaving bare rock, upon which no human repentance can renew the original timber. The modern English philosophy, too often preached by Radicals and practised by Conservatives, is: "Let the State give to every enterprising individual free leave to use up the natural products of the soil, vegetable or mineral, leaving prosperity and the future to shift for themselves."

Poisoning of the natural streams is a still worse offence perpetrated by the cupidity of trade. This was severely forbidden by our common law, yet constantly committed, simply because we have no official public prosecutors. The same cause makes laws against polluting the air by smoke ineffective. Neighbours may be annoyed, yet do not like the odium of prosecuting; in manufacturing towns all the rich have interest in impunity, and

shelter one another; much less is an individual likely to take the expense and risk of lawsuits, especially against an opulent company. Hence, long before the invention of gas polluted the Thames, foul water in plenty gushed into it against common law from the Fleet Ditch. But the main stream and upper water remained comparatively pure; for salmon came up with the tide beyond Richmond in the memory of men not yet decrepit. After the gas companies had made the water unfit for use no scruple was felt against increasing the pollution. No powerful corporation bestirred itself to prosecute, and neglect might seem already to have inflicted on the noble river the worst which it could suffer.

But theory, pedantry, and pretentious sanitation proved still more efficacious for evil than any mere neglect. A number of active-minded men, physicians, surgeons, and physicists, were shocked at the high death-rate of towns and their evident insalubrity. In order to improve the atmosphere they invented the bright idea of commanding the pollution of rivers. In the years 1844-48 it was in vain that any unpretending citizen, argued with the eager sanitarians who assumed the direction of Parliament against the odious offence of poisoning the natural streams. In vain did one remind them that this was the specific iniquity, the detestable crime peculiarly forbidden (according to Greek belief) by "that voice of many peoples which is truly a voice of God." They derided opposition as the outcry of ignorant conservatism, and cajoled Parliament (1848) into making that pollution of rivers to be compulsory, which from time immemorial had been penal. Before many years were past Parliament, in consequence, found itself half-poisoned by the pestiferous stench of the Thames. Then counter-legislation began. But the mischief had been made universal by fatuous law of which the sanitarian philosophers had been the originators, the Parliament the tool, and the helpless nation the victims. After this very grave blunder, to purify the polluted streams and get rid of noxious matters was easier to command than to effect. The evil which ought to have been removed by calling for the execution of the good old common law had been multiplied a hundredfold by the energy of would-be scientific statute law; it still distresses most and crushes many.

London, a very wealthy metropolis, has been relieved at the expense of many millions sterling; but it is only a relief, not a cure, which her vast constructions have achieved. The newer