ARE THE AMERICANS ANGLO-SAXONS ? T HERE is no error more
vulgar than that which declares that the people of the United States have no right to the barbarous but useful term, "Anglo- Saxon." We are told, for example, that what little En glishry they once possessed has long ago been bred out of them by foreign intermixture, and that the new American is a compound of a hundred races with hardly a dash of the true English-speaking strain. A more pre- posterous notion was never put forth by those who are induced by a muddy mixture of pride and ignorance to retaliate for American rudeness and boorishness in the past by British rudeness and boorishness in the present. Fortunately these extreme anti-Americans are few and significant of little ; but nevertheless a considerable section of "the better-vulgar" are apt to take up and believe the statement that the Americans have to a. large extent ceased to possess the right to call them- selves the most numerous branch of the Anglo-Saxon race. Let us for a moment examine the facts. To begin with, we must say that we shall not attempt to argue the matter with ethnographical precision. All that we want to assert, and that we can assert with perfect equanimity, is that the American people are as Anglo-Saxon as the British people. That is enough, and more than enough, to smash the argument that the people of this country have no concern with America owing to recent changes in its population. The Anglo-Saxons of the British Isles, or, to be more correct, the English - speakers of the British Isles, are made up of English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh. Three of these divisions are, of course, not Anglo-Saxons ; but if they are rightly to be counted as Anglo-Saxons here, they must be rightly counted Anglo-Saxons in America. No doubt enormous numbers of true foreigners have come into the United States, but so they have into the United Kingdom, and considering how small was our population when the first Flemings landed, and afterwards when the French and German Protestant refugees arrived, we cannot claim any very great immunity from foreign intermixture. At any rate, in America the great mass of the population is com- posed of natural English-speakers,—i.e., of men who be- long to the races to whom English has become the natural tongue. We should greatly doubt if more than 18 per cent. of the population was of foreign or of unmixed foreign origin,—using that term, of course, to mean people who did not naturally speak English.
But though a study of the Census returns shows clearly and decidedly enough that the Americans are not foreigners, there is a far more satisfactory way of proving that fact. The ethos, morale, and natural characteristics of the Re- public are distinctly Anglo-Saxon,—quite as distinctly as are those of the United Kingdom. The best way of deter- mining the distinguishing characteristics of a nation are to observe (1) the men who rule it, lead it, and represent it, (2) its religious proclivities, (3) the system of law under which it lives, (4) its literature. Now, we claim that in all these respects America is overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon. Take the names of the men who have ruled America in the past and who rale her now. Every one of them has the true English ring. Are not Washington, Lincoln, Garfield, English names? Take the names of the Presidents from the foundation of the Republic,—Washington, Adams, Jeffer- son, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson. They are quite as English as those of our own Premiers. In the whole list the only name which is not English, or Scotch, or Irish is Van Buren, a Knickerbocker from New York. But no one seri- ously puts Van Buren among the great men of the Republic. This is ancient history ? Not a bit of it. Look at the men who rule America to-day. The President is Mr. McKinley, the Vice-President is Mr. Hobart. The Secretary of State was Mr. Sherman, and is Mr. Day. The Secretary of the Treasury is Mr. Gage. The Secretaries of War and of the Navy are Mr. Alger and Mr. Long. The Secretary of the Interior is Mr. Cornelius Bliss. But it is not necessary to go on ; not a single member of the Cabinet has a foreign name. If we consider the question of religion, we shall at once have to admit that the Jeligious complexion of America is dis- tinctly and intensely Anglo-Saxon,—too Anglo-Saxon, assert many of the religious critics. Look next at American law. Throughout the Union the common law of England is the law of the land. In only one State, Louisiana, its principles do not hold ; and as our legal readers will remember, that great jurist, Chief Justice Marshall, laid it down that the common law of England is part of the law of the United States. The Courts of Michigan are more Anglo-Saxon than those of Edinburgh. Lastly, the literature of America is distinctly Anglo-Saxon. What could be more Anglo-Saxon or more "right English" than Fenimore Cooper, Longfellow, Lowell ? The statement is as true of the living as of the dead. Howells, for example, in spite of his literary sys- tem, is intensely Anglo-Saxon in feeling. It is, how- ever, not necessary to labour the point. As Carlyle said, we are all subjects of King Shakespeare. As long as the Americans acknowledge that allegiance, and in truth none could be more loyal, there can be no doubt as to their Englishry. It takes an Anglo-Saxon—i.e., one who has been brought up to speak English from a child and whose father and mother thought in English—to ap- preciate Shakespeare properly. The Germans may write far more learned treatises on Shakespeare's use of the infinitive than we do or can, and may seize a dozen new points in Hamlet's soul, but they do not appreciate the poet as does the true Anglo-Saxon. Only an American or an English- man can read Henry IV. and Henry V. and feel the blood tingling in his veins or his sides shaking with laughTer. That is our history, our poetry, our life, and no other race can understand it and love it as we do, At this very moment it is an American editor and American publishers, Mr. Furness and Messrs. Lippincott (good Anglo-Saxon names both), who are publishing the most exhaustive col- lection of Shakespeare's plays ever given to the world. A word remains to be said on another point. We are all very anxious just now, and rightly anxious, to declare that our fellow-subjects in the Colonies .are, as citizens of the British. Empire, full partakers with us in our great heritage. But if we consider all the white self-governing peoples of the British Empire as one, our population becomes perhaps less purely Anglo-Saxon than that of America. If we throw in the French Canadians and the Cape Dutch; as well as all the Germans that have settled in our Colonies, the population of the Empire will show a very strong foreign element. We do not deplore the fact, but rather rejoice in it, for as long as our governing force, our religious impulse, our law, and our literature remain Anglo-Saxon, the mixture does good, not harm. Still, the fact is worth noting. Those who try to draw an ethnological indictment against the United States will find that it will come home to roost when they consider the Anglo-Saxondom of the British Empire.
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