LA11GE EUHOPEAN POPULATION. 377 



boast to the native population of the State ? As the 

 Atlantic port of a growing interior country of boundless 

 extent, New York has certainly attracted many native- 

 born Americans from the interior of the State and from 

 New England to settle within its bounds for the purposes 

 of traffic, but it has drawn its main increase from this 

 side of the Atlantic. Every manufacturing district in 

 Europe, and every large commercial port, has sent its 

 agencies and branch establishments with similar trading 

 objects, so that, during these sixty years, New York may 

 be said to have been built up by Europe rather than by 

 the exertions of America herself. 



This fact becomes more striking, when we are informed 

 that, at the census of 1845, two-fifths (about 150,000) 

 of the whole population were foreigners born, and that, 

 with their children, these formed a considerable majority 

 of the population. Were we to go back to the grand 

 children, how many persons of what may be called real 

 American blood would remain ? 



In regard to the native energy, therefore, of American- 

 born, who are more than three generations removed from 

 Europe, the growth of New York and of similar commer 

 cial cities proves nothing. They present interesting and 

 remarkable social spectacles, but they do not establish, 

 as many hastily suppose, the existence of great energy 

 in the native race. Such energy may exist and abide 

 in the people, or it may be true, as Dr Knox and other 

 physiologists assert, that the Anglo-Saxon race will 

 and does degenerate in North America ; that it cannot 

 exist, in fact, beyond its natural region, without constant 

 accessions of new blood. The growth of New York, a 

 city only seventy years old, proves nothing on the general 

 subject. It is a testimony to the energy of its actual 

 inhabitants, but nothing more. 



The growth of cities in old or circumscribed countries, 

 is more decisive on such a point as this. Liverpool, or 



