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EEV. S. B. MCCORMICK, D.D., ON 



Tlie process of racial and religious change now going on in 

 America — by America in this paper we mean the United States 

 of America — is the most remarkable known to civilization. 

 Breeding and swarming are constantly recurring facts in higher 

 as in lower animal life. Crowding, poverty, condition push; 

 hope, desire, ambition draw — and again and again great hordes 

 of people have gone out to find in other lands better 

 opportunities and in tlieni to establish happier and freer homes. 

 No more cosmopolitan communities ever existed than ancient 

 Athens, Alexandria, Eome. Each was a racial and religious 

 composite. Even whole peoples have been so produced — the 

 Hellenes in Greece, the Pelasgi in Asia, the Eomans from 

 Eamnes, Etruscani, Sabines. The Huns came down over- 

 whelmingly upon Eome ; later the Turks spread far out into 

 alien territory. So into Great Britain came the Angles, Saxons, 

 Normans. All this is history. 



But in modern times, in Australia and in the Americas, 

 migrations are taking place far surpassing anything previously 

 known in history. The thing is gigantic, colossal. It is like 

 earlier movements in origin and motive. It differs only in 

 extent and in far-reaching consequences. The issues now 

 vitally affect the whole human family. There ai'e no more 

 undiscovered continents; no more unoccupied lands. In the 

 United States the original contributory nations were Great 

 Britain, Holland, Sweden, Germany and Protestant France, 

 forming settlements in New England, Maryland, New York, 

 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas. These people 

 came to a land which on the one hand was practically devoid of 

 population and on the other was practically unlimited in natural 

 resources. For a hundred years and more the movement was 

 continuous but relatively small. In 1790, the first year of the 

 new nation's life, with a population of 4,000,000, not many 

 more than 100,000 had come over in ships in the nearly two 

 hundred years from the first settlement in Jamestown. For a 

 century after 1650, immigration into New England was 

 discouraged and practically ceased. It ceased everywhere about 

 1750, when hostilities were resumed between France and 

 England. From 1776 until 1820 — nearly one-half a century — 

 not more than 250,000 persons were added to the population by 

 immigration Not yet, therefore, had this process, which is so 

 vital a fact to-day, become a problem in America. 



We speak of this in order to show that in selecting a date, 

 even if it be done somewhat arbitrarily, when the population of 

 the United States was a homogeneous one, we are fully justified 



