IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN RACE 589 



on account of religious or political persecution; they stood above their 

 fellow men in independence of thought and love of freedom. Thus by 

 a process of natural selection only the best people of Old England came 

 to settle the American colonies and to form the solid nucleus around 

 which the great American nation was to form. 8 Of these early settlers 

 only the most vigorous, the most intelligent, again survived ; the weaker 

 elements succumbing to the new conditions, the climate, the dangers 

 of a new country. 



After the war of independence came the Irish, the Germans, the 

 Scandinavians, the Austrians, the Swiss. The Celtic colonists, coming 

 from Ireland, Wales and parts of Scotland, mixed with the Anglo-Saxon 

 and Teutonic settlers. They have undoubtedly greatly modified the 

 character of the American people. The American is less stolid, less 

 phlegmatic than the Englishman; he is quicker, more nervous; in 

 vivacity he approaches the mercurial Frenchman. The character of the 

 American people was much less affected by the people who came from 

 middle and southern Germany, from Austria and Switzerland, because 

 these peoples are themselves the product of a mixture between the 

 Teutonic conquerors and the brachycephalic Alpine race and were thus 

 a less heterogeneous element than the Celtic immigrants. Here, too, a 

 selective process was at work. It was still the days of the sailing vessel 

 and the prairie schooner. Only the strongest, most energetic, most 

 independent would undertake such a long, tedious and dangerous voy- 

 age. Ammon, in his most interesting study on the population of South- 

 German cities, has shown that it is mostly the long-headed as the most 

 energetic people who move from the rural districts to the cities. Erom 

 this we may infer that the countries just mentioned sent principally 

 this class of people across the ocean to mingle their blood with a kin- 

 dred race. 



The greater part of this earlier immigration belonged to the agricul- 

 tural classes. Large numbers of families came from the rural districts 

 of northern and central Europe in quest of new homes, where they might 

 enjoy greater freedom and have larger opportunities, and where they 

 might be enabled to leave their children a goodly inheritance. Only 



8 England has for centuries sent out her best elements to colonize foreign 

 regions, and if there is any truth in the assertion of some modern English 

 writers that the British people is declining physically and intellectually, the 

 fact that that wonderful country has for centuries been drained of its most 

 valuable blood, would certainly not be one of its least causes. While her 

 nearest relatives, the Germans, spent their best powers in fruitless internecine 

 wars, England sent her best people into the most distant regions as the carriers 

 of intellectual culture and Anglo-Saxon civilization; and should her power 

 ever decline the famous boast of Macaulay will prove true. England's glory will 

 never perish, her very spirit is taking a new birth in America, Australia and 

 South Africa. These mighty colonies will bear witness of England's greatness 

 in all future centuries. 



