CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF THE 

 ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 



By ROBERT FERGUSON, M.P. 



(Presidential Address at the Carlisle Annual Meeting.) 



A CELEBRATED French writer, M. de Gerville, has lately put 

 forward a calculation that in a hundred years hence, the English 

 speaking population of the world will number 140,000,000, as 

 compared with 40,000,000 speaking French, and 50,000,000 

 speaking German. Without taking this particular estimate as 

 anything more than an intelligent speculation, we cannot doubt the 

 general fact that the English language is destined to a remarkable 

 predominance over all the other languages of the world. I do not 

 propose here to go into the question how far this is due to the 

 characteristics of the language itself, and how far to those of the 

 race who speak it, and to the institutions, staunch and yet elastic, 

 evolved from those characteristics, though both are no doubt very 

 important factors in the case. I propose rather to enter into a 

 few considerations on the interesting question as to what is likely 

 to be in the far-distant future the condition of that language. Will 

 it maintain its essential unity when a thousand years shall have 

 passed away, when Australia shall contain a population to which 

 that of the mother country can bear no comparison, and when 

 America shall have filled up with teeming myriads all her vast 

 continent, and still pressing on to the fulfilment of her destiny, 

 shall have crowded out the weaker races and the less stable 

 institutions of the Southern Hemisphere? Or will it, as is the 

 opinion of some writers on the subject, become ultimately divided 



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