Hesperothen; Notes from the West, Vol. 2 (of 2): A Record of a Ramble in the United States and Canada in the Spring and Summer of 1881Russell, William Howard, Sir
History
Hesperothen; Notes from the West, Vol. 2 (of 2): A Record of a Ramble in the United States and Canada in the Spring and Summer of 1881
Russell, William Howard, Sir
United States -- Description and travel
The Americans of New England and of the Eastern States do not feel
anxious on that score, because their institutions are thoroughly
founded, their character formed, and they trust to the great power of
accomplished facts to assimilate the alien elements and sustain the
fabric of the Republic. The bugbear of a great Chinese immigration
has ceased to practically influence Californian politics, and it may
be safely assumed that the bulk of the future immigrants from the
Celestial Empire will only come from the same sources as those which
have hitherto supplied the stream. No wonder, however, that thoughtful
Americans--and there are many who think of the future of their country
as something quite apart from dollars--are filled with grave anxieties
when they see such floods of purely foreign material, which will in
all probability exercise a preponderating influence over the politics
of the Great Republic, surging into the States. Particularly have the
home missionary clergy, as they are styled, been struck by the enormous
influence which this foreign immigration has exercised. According
to one authority, the Rev. Mr. Stimson, of Worcester, "it is not a
question of spreading any particular form of Christianity or of Church
government, but a momentous struggle of American institutions with
alien civilisations and religions for the control of the great Western
country. The problem is not a matter of cleaning door-yards, but of
saving a continent for freedom." The Chinese Question and the Indian
Question are, they think, as nothing compared with the Irish Question
and the German Question. "The Republic," we are told, "stands on a
foundation as broad as humanity itself," whatever that may mean, "but
its condition of existence is a universal regard for the interests of
all." Often during the course of the Duke of Sutherland's excursion
it was our good fortune to fall in with men of great political and
social knowledge. The future of the Republic is, in the mind of these
men, clouded with uncertainty and doubt. They are apprehensive of
some unknown danger. It may be corruption of political life leading
to want of faith in free institutions; it may be the rival energies
and the opposing interests which Washington foresaw as likely to array
the East against the West--the Atlantic States against the inland
States, and it is calculated by some sanguine people that before this
century is over there will be eighteen, or possibly twenty, States
admitted into the Union formed out of the Territories which are now
under the central Government at Washington. Upon such influences as
these alien immigration may be expected to act with prodigious power.
At a recent meeting in Springfield a clergyman gave as an illustration
of the absolute indifference of the foreign immigrants to Republican
institutions a conversation he had with a Norwegian minister in
Minneapolis. "There is nothing," said this gentleman, "in America which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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