festooned with Falernian clusters; they clutched, with a kind of frantic joy, at the fruit of the fig-tree and the olive; at the melting peach, the luscious plum, the golden orange, and the pomegranate, whose tinted cheek outblushes every thing but the living carnation of youthful love. "With grim delight the brood of winter view A brighter day and heavens of azure hue, By the fortune of war, single detachments and even mighty armies frequently suffered defeat; but their place was immediately taken by new hordes, which fell upon declining Rome as the famished wolves in one of Catlin's pictures fall upon an aged buffalo in our Western prairies. The imperial monster, powerful even in his decrepitude, would often scatter their undisciplined array with his iron tusks, and trample them by thousands under his brazen feet; but when he turned back, torn and bleeding, to his seven hills, tens of thousands came howling from the Northern forests, who sprang at his throat and buried their fangs in his lacerated side. Wherever they conquered, and in the end they conquered everywhere, they established themselves on the soil, invited new-comers, and from their union with the former inhabitants, the nations of the South and West of Europe, at the present day, for the most part, trace their descent. We know but little of the numbers thus thrown in upon the Roman republic and empire in the course of eight or ten centuries. They were, no doubt, greatly exaggerated by the panic fear of the inhabitants; and the pride of the Roman historians would lead them to magnify the power before which their own legions had so often quailed. But when we consider the difficulty of subsisting a large number of persons in a march through an unfriendly country, and this at a time when much of the now cultivated portion of Europe was covered with forest and swamp, I am disposed to think that the hosts which for a succession of centuries overran the Roman empire did not in the aggregate exceed in numbers the immigrants that have arrived in the United States since 1790. In other words, I am inclined to believe, that within the last sixty years the Old World has poured in upon the United States a number of persons as great, with their natural increase, as Asia sent into Europe in these armed migrations of barbarous races. Here, of course, the parallel ends. The races that invaded Europe came to lay waste and to subjugate; the hosts that cross the Atlantic are peaceful immigrants. The former burst upon the Roman empire, and by oft-repeated strokes beat it to the ground. The immigrants to America from all countries come to cast in their lot with the native citizens, and to share with us this great inheritance of civil and religious liberty. The former were ferocious barbarians, half clad in skins, speaking strange tongues, worshipping strange gods with bloody rites. The latter are the children of the countries from which the first European settlers of this continent proceeded, and belong, with us, to the great common family of Christendom. The former destroyed the culture of the ancient world, and it was only after a thousand years that a better civilization grew up from its ruins. The millions who have established themselves in America within sixty years are, from the moment of their arrival, gradually absorbed into the mass of the population, conforming to the laws and moulding themselves to the manners of the country, and contributing their share to its prosperity and strength. It is a curious coincidence, that, as the first mighty wave of the hostile migration that burst upon Europe before the time of our Saviour consisted of tribes belonging to the great Celtic race, the remains of which, identified by their original dialect, are still found in Brittany, in Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, and especially in Ireland, so by far the greater portion of the new and friendly immigration to the United States consists of persons belonging to the same ardent, true-hearted, and too often oppressed race. I have heard, in the villages of Wales and the Highlands of Scotland, the Gospel preached in substantially the same language in which Brennus uttered his haughty summons to Rome, and in which the mystic songs of the Druids were chanted in the depths of the primeval forests of France and England, in the time of Julius Cæsar. It is still spoken by thousands of Scotch, Welsh, and Irish immigrants, in all parts of the United States.* This great Celtic race is one of the most remarkable that has appeared in history. Whether it belongs to that extensive Indo-European family of nations, which, in ages before the dawn of history, took up a line of march in two columns from Lower India, and, moving westward by both a northern and a southern route, finally diffused itself over Western Asia, Northern Africa, and the greater part of Europe; or whether, as others suppose, the Celtic race belongs * A learned and friendly correspondent, of Welsh origin, is of opinion that I have fallen into a gross error, in classing the Irish, Welsh, and Scotch as one race of people, or Celts, whose language is the same. The slightest acquaintance,” he adds, "with the Welsh and Irish languages would convince you that they were totally different. A Welshman cannot understand one word of Irish, neither can the latter understand one word of Welsh." In a popular view of the subject this may be correct, in like manner as the Anglo-Saxon, the Teutonic, and Scandinavian races would, in a popular use of the terms, be considered as distinct races, speaking languages mutually unintelligible. But the etymologist regards their languages as substantially the same; and ethnographically these nations belong to one and the same stock. There are certainly many points, in reference to the ancient history of the Celts, on which learned men greatly differ, and at which it was impossible that I should even glance in the superficial allusions which my limits admitted. But there is no point on which ethnographers are better agreed, than that the Bretons, Welsh, Irish, and Highland Scotch belong to the Celtic race, representing, no doubt, different national families, which acquired each its distinctive dialect at a very early period. Dr. Prichard (the leading authority on questions of this kind), after comparing the remains of the ancient Celtic language, as far as they can now be traced in proper names, says: 'We must hence conclude that the dialect of the ancient Gauls was nearly allied to the Welsh, and much more remotely related to the Erse and Gaelic." Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, Vol. III. p. 135. See also Latham's English Language, p. 74. - to a still older stock, and was itself driven down upon the South and into the West of Europe by the overwhelming force of the Indo-Europeans, is a question which we have no time at present to discuss. However it may be decided, it would seem that for the first time, as far as we are acquainted with the fortunes of this interesting race, they have found themselves in a really prosperous condition in this country. Driven from the soil in the West of Europe, to which their fathers clung for two thousand years, they have at length, and for the first time in their entire history, found a real home in a land of strangers. Having been told, in the frightful language of political economy, that at the daily table which Nature spreads for the human family there is no cover laid for them in Ireland, they have crossed the ocean, to find occupation, shelter, and bread on a foreign but friendly soil. This "Celtic Exodus," as it has been aptly called, is to all the parties immediately connected with it one of the most important events of the day. To the emigrants themselves it may be regarded as a passing from death to life. It will benefit Ireland by reducing a surplus population, and restoring a sounder and juster relation of capital and labor. It will benefit the laboring classes in England, where wages have been kept down to the starvation-point by the struggle between the native population and the inhabitants of the sister island for that employment and food, of which there is not enough for both. This benefit will extend from England to ourselves, and will lessen the pressure of that competition which our labor is obliged to sustain, with the ill-paid labor of Europe. In addition to all this, the constant influx into America of stout and efficient hands supplies the greatest want in a new country, which is that of labor, gives value to land, and facilitates the execution of every species of private enterprise and public work. I am not insensible to the temporary inconveniences which are to be offset against these advantages, on both sides of the water. Much suffering attends the emigrant there, on his passage, and after his arrival. It is possible that the value of our native labor may have been depressed by too sudden and extensive a supply from abroad; and it is certain that our asylums and almshouses are crowded with foreign inmates, and that the resources of public and private benevolence have been heavily drawn upon. These are considerable evils, but they have perhaps been exaggerated. It must be remembered, in the first place, that the immigration daily pouring in from Europe is by no means a pauper immigration. On the contrary, it is already regarded with apprehension abroad, as occasioning a great abstraction of capital. How the case may be in Great Britain and Ireland, I have seen no precise statement; but it is asserted on apparently good grounds, that the consumption and abstraction of capital caused by immigration from Germany amounts annually to twenty millions of rix-dollars, or fifteen millions of our currency.* * No doubt, foreign immigation is attended with an influx of foreign pauperism. In reference to this, I believe your system of public relief is better here in New York than ours in Massachusetts, in which, however, we are making important changes. It is said, that, owing to some defect in our system, or its administration, we support more than our share of needy foreigners. They are sent in upon us from other States. New York, as the greatest seaport, must be exposed also to more than her proportionate share of the burden. However the evil arises, it may no doubt be mitigated by judicious legislation; and in the mean time Massachusetts and New York might do a worse thing with a por * In an instructive article relative to the German emigration in Otto Hubner's Jahrbuch für Volkswirthschaft und Statistik, the numbers who emigrated from Germany, from 1846 to 1851 inclusive, are estimated to have amounted to an annual average of 96,676, and the amount of capital abstracted by them from the country to an average of 19,370,333 rix-dollars (about fifteen million Spanish dollars) per annum. |