2st April. New Zeatanp, that paradise of the modern democrat, is about to take another leap in the direction of the social millennium by adopting heroic measures in public hygiene, and by placing limitation on the colonists in racial reproduction. A recent Times asserts that the government of the colony is on the point of introducing a measure for the exclusion of consumptives and for legislating against tuberculosis on the same lines as against small-pox, that is, by making the masters of ships liable for immigrants; the government further proposes to ensure the purity of the race by excluding lower types and peoples of lower morality. This is indeed a large order and is as remarkable for its cheerful optimism as for its belief in legislative effort, We believe that in one or two of the socialistic experiments made in the United States during the last fifty years the question of how to secure a sane and more physically perfect posterity has been attacked in a practical manner—sextial selection was removed from the dominancy of the affections and caprice, as among the English peoples, and from parental prudence and avarice, as among the French: still these experiments were on s0 limited a scale and were so entirely promoted by cranks avd extreme faddists as to have little or no value to the serious student of sociology. hey were moreover on an exceedingly limited scale, and were completely masked in their results by the issues of other social eccentric cities as to be practically valueless. As a matter of fact we have to go back to ancient Sparta before we find legislative enactment bearing on the Ave moderns have undoubtedly carried ysique and constitution of posterity.
our ideas of personal liberty very far in this direction and have distinctly ignored the claims of our descendants on our prudence and care. The wit once asked: "What has posterity done for us, that we should do aught for it?" Dhe fact that this is good as an epigram does not make it effective as an argument; no ove can fail to observe the tremendous advantage robust health gives in the struggle for existence both individually and racially. The time seems to be coming when the social conscience shall be so exacting as to demand the prohibition by law of the marriage of consumptive and cancerous subjects and weaklings.
For many years the works of Mr. Darwin and his school have familiarized us with the bearings of sexual selection on the question of social progress; no one can read that literature and long ignore the application to the human race of those principles which Darwin tested with such a wealth of illustration in the world of natural history, both animal and vegetable. Even Mr. Punch has attacked the question avd under the guise of a genial wit has said not a few wise things on a grave subject. Mr. clu Maurier twenty years ago used }to amuse his numberless admirers by his alliances of high intellect and tiny body to great body and no brains: and who can forget the remark of the prize ox to the puny Cockney: "Ah! had as much care been taken with your breeding as with mine, you also might be worth looking at;'—as a plain matter of possibility Taurus was right.
We suppose our antipodean cousins are laying to heart the teaching of the late Dr. Pearson, Some folk vainly imagine that the speculations in such purely philosophical works as National Character can never be turned to any practical issue; a greater mistake caus not be made: the facts are exactly the opposite way. Nearlyallhigh speculation is ultimately reduced to aphorism and embodied in conduct; but as a rule the process is a slow one and the thought has to percolate through many strata of mind and society before it finds a practical issue. In this case the percolation has been phenomenally fast. Pearson preached the pessimism of racial struggle, and placed before the southern democracies the rationale of what they had been already doing in a spirit of blind fear and selfishness. By a stroke of genius he suddenly transformed a policy seemingly the product of man's lowest nature into something incumbent on them by everything they held sacred and divine he defended the exclusion of the Asiatics and Polynesians as the ove imperative duty of civilised man both to himself, to posterity, and to civilisation.
Apart from its philosophic interest the new policy will command most attention by its details and practical application. It will involve very close medical scrutiny if it is to have any real results; we observe that shipmasters are to be liable: these unhappy camels are liable for so much already that another straw will hardly break them, but we see rocks ahead in this direction, A merchant skipper cannot in reason add medical diagnosis to his existing qualifications in order to command a ship bound for New Zealand; in self-defence he will probably insist on every passenger bringing a certificate of immunity from consumption on board with him and will exact a formal affidavit that he comes from a wholesome stock. We would hesitate to say that this cannot be done; so much has been done iv the direction of State hygiene at home in recent years, and done with such excellent results to the public at large, that it would be unwise to place a limit on new effort. Just a century ago smallpox almost regularly decimated the human race, and there were no hopes that the wit of man would ever be able to compass the cure; thirty years ago canine rabies
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.