222 THE ANGLO-.SAXOJ^ AND THE WORLD's FUTURE. 



make of himself ; free to transform himself from a rail- 

 splitter or a tanner or a canal-boy, into the nation's 

 President. Our aristocracy, unlike that of Europe, is 

 open to all comers. Wealth, position, influence, are prizes 

 offered for energy; and every farmer's boy, every ap- 

 prentice and clerk, every friendless and penniless immi- 

 grant, is free to enter the lists. Thus many causes 

 co-operate to produce here the most forceful and tremen- 

 dous energy in the world. 



What is the significance of such facts ? These tend- 

 encies infold the future; they are the mighty alpliabet 

 with which God writes his prophecies. May we not, by 

 a careful laying together of the letters, spell out some- 

 thing of his meaning? It seems to me that God, with 

 infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon 

 race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. 

 Heretofore there has always been in the history of the 

 world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into 

 which the crowded countries of the East have poured 

 their surplus populations. But the widening waves cf 

 migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west 

 from the valley of the Euphrates, meet to-day on our 

 Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The un- 

 occupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will 

 soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure 

 of population on the means of subsistence will be felt 

 here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will 

 the world enter upon a new stage of its history— ^/le 

 final competition of races, for ichich the Anglo-Saxon 

 is being schooled. Long before the thousand millions 

 are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in 

 this stock and strengthened in the United States, will 

 assert itself. Then tliis race of unequaled energy, with 

 all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth be- 

 hind it— the representative, let us hope, of the largest 

 liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization 

 - having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calcu- 

 lated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will 

 spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this 



