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in the history of the human race?
Tried by the standard of ancient races, we are all new-comers together; we are still pilgrims and sojourners, as our fathers were.
Those of us who are of English blood represent a race so mingled and combined, so swept over by successive invasions and conquests, that it can claim no purity of strain, but only the strength of composite structure.
Trace back the origin of the Dutch or the French Huguenot element, and it is much the same.
The French Canadians who are now pouring in upon us, or the Jews from whatever quarter, have probably a less mingled descent than most of those who deprecate their arrival.
If this be the standard, it is for them to criticise us, not for us to criticise them.
Whatever may be the right policy as to restricting immigration, it is always to be remembered that it is immigration, not natural increase, which has made the material greatness of this country.
It is not the seventy persons residing in Chicago in 1830 who were the progenitors of the two million claimed by that city to-day.
In a remarkable book, called The New Rome, or the United States of the World, published in New York fifty years ago, the authors, both Germans, described the mission
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1897.
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