i 9 4 MV Wl'E 



Turning now from the land to the people, what can w< 

 Say of our American COUSUIS as a race and as a nation? 'flic 

 great thing to keep in mind is, that they are, largely and 

 primarily, of the same blood and of the same nature as our- 

 selves, with characters and habits formed in part by the evil 

 traditions inherited from us, in part by the influence of the 

 new environment to which they have been exposed. Just as 

 we owe our good and bad qualities to the intermixture and 

 Struggle of somewhat dissimilar peoples, so do they. Briton 

 and Roman, Saxon and Dane, Norsemen and Norman-French, 

 Scotch and Irish Celts — all have intermingled in various por- 

 tions, and helped to create that energetic amalgam known the 

 world over as Englishmen. So North America has been 

 largely settled by the English, partly by Dutch, French, and 

 Spanish, whose territories were soon absorbed by conquest 

 or purchase ; while, during the last century, a continuous 

 stream of immigrants — Germans, Irish, Highland and Low- 

 land Scotch, Scandinavians, Italians, Russians — has flowed in, 

 and is slowly but surely becoming amalgamated into one great 

 Anglo-American people. 



Most of the evil influences under which the United States 

 have grown to their present condition of leaders in civilization, 

 and a great power among the nations of the world, they 

 received from us. We gave them the example of religious 

 intolerance and priestly rule, which they have now happily 

 thrown off more completely than we have done. We gave 

 them slavery, both white and black — a curse from the effects 

 of which they still suffer, and out of which a wholly satis- 

 factory escape seems as remote as ever. But even more 

 insidious and more widespread in its evil results than both of 

 these, we gave them our bad and iniquitious feudal land 

 system; first by enormous grants from the Crown to indi- 

 viduals or to companies, but also — what has produced even 

 worse effects — the ingrained belief that land — the first essential 

 of life, the source of all things necessary or useful to mankind, 

 by labour upon which all wealth arises — may yet, justly and 

 equitably, be owned by individuals, be monopolized by capital- 

 ists or by companies, leaving the great bulk of the people as 



