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Plato Profile Directory 01
Page 04
We owe to foreign scholars many studies of value on particular questions of Norman and Angevin history, like M. CHARLES BEMONT's on the trial of King John for the murder of Arthur, and a few long works of first importance. Dr. H. BOeHMER's Kirche und Staat in England und der Normandie im XI und XII Jahrhundert is of great interest on the conflict of Anselm with Henry I and the consequences that flowed from it. O. ROeESSLER's Kaiserin Mathilde is of particular value for the foreign policy of Henry I and for the reign of Stephen, though inclined to attach too much weight to what are really conjectures. M.A. LUCHAIRE's contribution to E. Lavisse's Histoire de France is a very interesting piece of work, dealing fully with the French side of English foreign relations, and of especial value for the first three Angevin kings. The same subject is receiving also minute and careful treatment in Dr. ALEXANDER CARTELLIERI's Philip II Augustus, Koenig van Frankreich, the first volume of which goes to the death of Henry II, while M. PETIT-DUTAILLIS's Etude sur la Vie et la Regne de Louis VIII is useful for the last years of John.
Now, how has a society of individuals--the community within the frontiers of a nation--met this difficulty which now confronts the society of nations, the difficulty that is of the danger of the power of an individual or a group? They have met it by determining that no individual or group shall exercise physical power or predominance over others; that the community alone shall be predominant. How has that predominance been secured? By determining that any one member attacked shall be opposed by the whole weight of the community, (exercised, say, through the policeman.) If A flies at B's throat in the street with the evident intention of throttling him to death, the community, if it is efficient, immediately comes to the support of B.
It was impossible to get labour up that river. The few _seringueiros_, chiefly negroes who were there in absolute slavery, had been led and established by their masters up the river, with no chance of getting away. Their masters came, of course, every year to bring down the rubber that had been collected. Twenty times the quantity could easily be brought down to the coast if labour were obtainable. Not only was the Juruena River itself almost absolutely untouched commercially--as we have seen, we did not meet a soul during the fifty days we navigated it--but even important tributaries close to S. Manoel, such as the Euphrasia, the Sao Thome, the Sao Florencio, the Misericordia, and others, were absolutely desert regions, although the quantity of rubber to be found along those streams must be immense. The difficulty of transport, even on the Tapajoz--from the junction of the two rivers the Juruena took the name of Tapajoz River--was very great, although the many rapids there encountered were mere child's play in comparison with those we had met with up above. In them, nevertheless, many lives were lost and many valuable cargoes disappeared for ever yearly. The rubber itself was not always lost when boats were wrecked, as rubber floats, and some of it was generally recovered. The expense of a journey up that river was enormous; it took forty to sixty days from the mouth of the Tapajoz to reach the _collectoria_ of S. Manoel. Thus, on an average the cost of freight on each kilo (about 2 lb.) of rubber between those two points alone was not less than sevenpence or eightpence.
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