"All these are desirable traits; and as we look forward to the future of our commonwealth we should wish to see them preserved, and should deprecate influences tending to destroy the conditions under which they exist. Any such phenomenon as immigration, exerting wide and lasting influence, should be examined with great care to see what its effect on these things will be."[79] [Sidenote: Protestant Religion Vital] We should add to this thoughtful statement a clause concerning religion. A vital thing to be maintained and extended is the Protestant faith which formed the basis of our colonial and national life. No part of the subject should receive more careful scrutiny than the effect of immigration upon Protestant America. Whatever would make this country less distinctively Protestant in religion tends to destroy all the other social and civil characteristics which, it is well said, we wish to preserve. [Sidenote: American Life Changing] When immigration began in the early years of the nineteenth century, the American people possessed a distinctive life and character of their own, differing in many respects from that of any other people. The easy amalgamation of the races that formed the colonial stock--English, Huguenot, Scotch, Dutch--had produced an American stock distinct from any in the Old World. The nation was practically homogeneous, and its social, religious, and political ideals and aims were distinct. That great changes have taken place in the past century no one will deny. The material expansion and development have not been more marked than the changes social and religious. [Sidenote: Influence of Immigration] Just what part immigration has played in producing these changes it is of course difficult to say with exactness, but unquestionably the part has been very great. The twenty-three millions of aliens admitted into the United States since 1820 brought their habits and customs and standards of living with them; brought also their religion or want of it; and it would be absurd to imagine that all of these millions had been Americanized, or, in other words, had given up their old ways for our ways of thinking and living. On the contrary, they have transported all sorts of political notions from monarchial countries to our soil. "The continental ideas of the Sabbath, the nihilist's ideas of government, the communist's ideas of property, the pagan's ideas of religion--all these mingle in our air with the ideas that shaped the men at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge," that adorned hill, dale and prairie with Christian church and Christian school, and made possible the building of free America. [Sidenote: The Grade of the Aliens]