We always speak of Anglo-Saxons and identify the extension of the
Colonial Empire with that of the Anglo-Saxon race. But even if we assume
that the Celts of England and of the Scotch Lowlands were exterminated
by the Saxons, taking all the elements of Celtic population in the two
islands together, they must bear a very considerable proportion to the
Teutonic element. That large Irish settlements are being formed in the
cities of Northern England is proved by election addresses coquetting
with Home Rule. In the competition of the races on the American
Continent the Irish more than holds its own. In the age of the steam-
engine the Scotch Highlands, the mountains of Cumberland and
Westmoreland, of Wales, of Devonshire, and Cornwall, are the asylum of
natural beauty, of poetry and hearts which seek repose from the din and
turmoil of commercial life. In the primaeval age of conquest they, with
seagirt Ireland, were the asylum of the weaker race. There the Celt
found refuge when Saxon invasion swept him from the open country of
England and from the Scotch Lowlands. There he was preserved with his
own language, indicating by its variety of dialects the rapid flux and
change of unwritten speech; with his own Christianity, which was that of
Apostolic Britain; with his un-Teutonic gifts and weaknesses, his
lively, social, sympathetic nature, his religious enthusiasm,
essentially the same in its Calvinistic as in its Catholic guise, his
superstition, his clannishness, his devotion to chiefs and leaders, his
comparative indifference to institutions, and lack of natural aptitude
for self-government.
The further we go in these inquiries the more reason there seems to be
for believing that the peculiarities of races are not congenital, but
impressed by primaeval circumstance. Not only the same moral and
intellectual nature, but the same primitive institutions, are found in
all the races that come under our view; they appear alike in Teuton,
Celt, and Semite. That which is not congenital is probably not
indelible, so that the less favoured races, placed under happier
circumstances, may in time be brought to the level of the more favoured,
and nothing warrants inhuman pride of race. But it is surely absurd to
deny that peculiarities of race, when formed, are important factors in
history. Mr. Buckle, who is most severe upon the extravagances of the
race theory, himself runs into extravagances not less manifest in a
different direction. He connects the religious character of the
Spaniards with the influence of apocryphal volcanoes and earthquakes,
whereas it palpably had its origin in the long struggle with the Moors.
He, in like manner, connects the theological tendencies of the Scotch
with the thunderstorms which he imagines (wrongly, if we may judge by
our own experience) to be very frequent in the Highlands, whereas Scotch
theology and the religious habits of the Scotch generally were formed in
the Lowlands and among the Teutons, not among the Celts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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