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.[1] 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 voyage. 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. From this we may infer that the countries just mentioned sent principally this class of people across the ocean to mingle their blood with a kindred race.
The greater part of this earlier immigration belonged to the agricultural 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
- ↑ 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.
