attacked by the power which so often has been the most formidable foe of freedom? What dikes can be erected against the undesirable foreign flood, which, pouring in yearly in volume always increasing through the unobstructed sluices of our seaports, seems likely so far to dilute our blood as to make it unequal to the task of sustaining Anglo-Saxon freedom? Said Lowell once: "I remember a good many years ago, M. Guizot asked me how long I thought the American Republic was going to last. Said I, M. Guizot, it will last just as long as the traditions of the men of English descent who founded it are dominant there.' And he assented. And that is my firm faith." Can we be quite sure that the traditions of the men of English descent will remain dominant? Mr. Bryce, in a passage already quoted, speaks confidently of the vast assimilating power possessed by the American people, and makes light of anticipation of evils to arise from an overtaxing of that power. Perhaps he is too confident. Who can help being daunted before present facts? An American minister to a foreign court declares in Berlin without contradiction that the ideas of Germany have displaced those of the Anglo-Saxon world in America! Philadelphia journalist thinks a trip from the seaboard to the Mississippi enough to disabuse one of the idea that this is an Anglo-Saxon nation.2 An intelligent American citizen of foreign birth claims also that our whole civilization is at present German, rather than English. "The republican spirit is German rather than English. The German peasants 1 Matthew Arnold's story; see p. 314. 2" Philadelphia American," December 8, 1888. A in 1525 fought for every principle that it was the fortune of England to realize much later. The English-Americans may go. The republic will last." 1 Men among us whose words have some weight speak thus lightly of a decay of Anglo-Saxon strength in America. Meantime, the flood ever rises: through the sluices pour currents from a score of peoples, the stream often noisome through ignorance and vice. No fact is better established than that strains of men, as of the lower animals, are improved by crossing. To breed in and in produces degeneration. New blood, provided it comes from sources not too remote, and is without morbid taint, invigorates. New blood is to be welcomed, and yet it should not be infused to so large an extent as to make of the strain a different thing. Anglo-Saxon we ought to remain, if Anglo-Saxon freedom is to be maintained. "It is part of the inexorable logic of fact and nature, that you cannot have the growth of the living creature, plant, animal, man, nation, seriously injured in the growing time and then set right in subsequent years. The stunted tree, the starved child, the crushed and spirit-broken nation, bear the marks of their injury to the end." As regards political freedom, every people but the Anglo-Saxons has been at some time crushed and become spirit-broken. To Anglo-Saxons alone can our American freedom be safely intrusted. Invigorate the stock as you please with blood from Scandinavian, German, Irish, French, Russian,from whatever good source, but let it remain Anglo 1 Private letter to the author, from a "foreign-born United States citizen." 2 Peter Bayne: Chief Actors of the Puritan Revolution, pp. 71, 72. Saxon still. "Our American Republic will endure just as long as the traditions of the men of English descent who founded it are dominant there," and no longer. Embarrass traordinarily serious. It is not probable that the difficulties which beset civilized men at the present day are extraordinarily serious; indeed, it is quite certain that our ments not ex- troubles are small as compared with those with which, in the past, civilization has repeatedly been threatened. They are, however, sufficiently serious, and among civilized men to-day the English-speaking race has its full share of embarrassments. In a cursory way, some of these embarrassments have been indicated: it is no part of the purpose of this book to show how they must be met. The problems of the time are abundantly discussed. Let us only discuss here the matter whether our race, so numerous, so strong, so resourceful, is also in other respects so circumstanced as to be likely to wage a winning war. Let us ask two questions: 1. Does the English-speaking race respect and love the freedom which it has inherited? 2. Has the race within itself any proper feeling of brotherhood? Do its members stand ready to join hands, believing that in union there is strength? Only if these questions can be answered in the affirmative can Anglo-Saxon freedom be certain of permanence. CHAPTER XIX. DO WE RESPECT OUR FREEDOM ? First. Do we respect the freedom which we have inherited? 30, 1889. On the 30th of April, 1889, the writer, in a great city lying in the border-land between North and South, watched the passing of a vast procession. The celebraThus the people had chosen, upon the cen- tion of April tenary of the inauguration of Washington and of the going into operation of the Federal Constitution, to do honor to our chief hero, and to the ordered Anglo-Saxon freedom which he fought to sustain. It was a city which at the time of the celebration was, and for many years before had been, a house divided against itself. Sharp race-conflicts between black and white, bitter religious feuds, discord between capitalist and laborer, between the drinker and prohibitionist, between Northerner and Southerner, quarrels of many kinds proceeding sometimes beyond recrimination to bloodshed, had for years found in that city an arena. On that day, however, was presented a remarkable spectacle of harmony. Over each division of the marching column, everywhere from house-tops and windows, waved the stars and stripes. A division of schoolboys followed a division of gray-beards. Catholic and Protestant stepped for once to the same music; so, too, the Knights of St. Patrick and the Society of St. George; the negro and the master whose authority the Civil War had broken; Bohemians and Hungarians with a noisome flavor of anarchy in their somewhat sullen lines, and the solid representatives of the mart and of the bank; Confederate veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic. For the moment all was harmony; disputes were hushed; the "plain people" was at one as regarded paying honor to the great instrument upon which our polity rests, and the great soldier and magistrate who was its main establisher and upholder, at one in respect for our AngloSaxon freedom. Saxon free dom. There can be no doubt that in England, too, the 'plain people," however much reluctance the priviThe people's leged class might show, would be equally love of Anglo- harmonious, if similar occasion were given; nor can there be any doubt as regards the universal zeal for democratic freedom of each great English dependency. Nor is it the "plain people " alone who stand strongly for democracy. However it may be here and there eyed askance, and its inevitable progress toward supreme power regarded as a calamity, it is not the sentiment of the scholars and thinkers best worth following. Andrew Carnegie, a generous representative of capital, glorifies "Triumphant Democracy"; but there are voices better worth heeding than that of the fluent, quick-minded Scotch iron-master, that have spoken strongly, in well-weighed words, their faith. Says J. Toulmin Smith,2 treating of the kind View of Andrew Carne gie. 1 See Dilke on this point, Problems of Greater Britain, p. 490. 2 Local Self-Government and Centralization. London, J. Chapman, 1851, p. 40. |