The history of the colonization and growth of this country strongly supports the view here taken. The descendants of England were indeed the chief, but by no means the only agents in the Colonial period. The Dutch on the banks of the Hudson, the Swedes on the Delaware, the Germans in Pennsylvania and the neighboring States, the Huguenots in South Carolina, New York and Boston, were amongst our earliest and most useful settlers. In a more recent period Scotland, Ireland and all parts of Germany have made the largest contributions to our population. Florida, California and New Mexico are of Spanish origin. The French claimed once by right of exploration and partial occupation the immense central valley from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountains; and although these possessions have long since been ceded to England and the United States, the French element can never be entirely effaced on the banks of the lower Mississippi or in Canada East. In the Revolutionary War the descendants of the Continental Europeans, especially the Germans of Pennsylvania and Virginia, in proportion to their number, fought with as much zeal and success and shed their blood as freely for the independence of the country as the Anglo-Americans. Some of them, as the Muhlenbergs and the Hiesters, acquired considerable distinction as officers of the army or members of the first Congress. But a number of our most eminent Revolutionary heroes were not even native Americans, but came from different nations to offer us the aid of their means, their enthusiasm, their military skill and experience in the hour of trial. The Irish Montgomery died for us at the gates of Quebec. General Mercer, who fell in the battle of Princeton, was a native of Scotland. Kosciusko, the Pole, paid his early vows to liberty in our cause, and his countryman, Pulaski, perished for it at Savannah. The noble Germans, Baron de Kalb, who shared with Gaines the glory of capturing Burgoyne and fell in the battle of Camden in South Carolina, bleeding of seven wounds, and Steuben, the pupil of Frederic the Great, and the Seven Years War, who left a handsome pension to serve his adopted country and helped to decide the day at Yorktown, crowned in the new world the high military reputation which they had previously acquired in the old; they were amongst the most experienced officers in the American army, and did it essential service, especially by training, with immense labor, the raw recruits, and preparing them for the victories of the battle-field. Our Congress knew well how to appreciate their merits, by erecting to the former a monument at Annapolis, and by voting to the latter a handsome annual pension, to which the legislatures of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York added large donations of land. France threw the weight of her powerful moral influence and material aid into our scale, and sent us the Count de