of seven or eight times as much
as the thirty-five millions in specie it took to fight through the
Revolutionary war. For a while, Hans came with his thalers, but they
outfooted him--"fast and faster" behind came "unmerciful disaster,"
and he was fain to turn his back on the land of promise and promises.
Similar set-backs, however, are interspersed through our previous
history, and the influence of the last one may be over-rated.

In truth, the Old World's fund of humanity is not sufficiently ample
to keep up the pace; and the rate of natural increase is no longer
what it was when the country was all new, and cornfield and nursery
vied in fecundity. That the former source of augmentation is gaining
in proportion upon the latter is apparent from the last three returns.
The ratio of foreign-born inhabitants to the aggregate in 1850 was
9.68 per cent. in 1860, 13.16, and in 1870, 14.44. In the last-named
year, moreover, 10,892,015, or 28 per cent. of the entire population,
white and black, are credited with foreign parentage on one or both
sides. Excluding the colored element, ranked as all native, this
proportion rises to 32 per cent.

Judged by the test of language, three-fifths of those who are of
foreign birth disappear from the roll of foreigners, 3,119,705 out
of 5,567,229 having come from the British Isles and British America.
Germany, including Bohemia, Holland and Switzerland, sums up
1,883,285; Scandinavia, 241,685; and France and Belgium, 128,955. The
Celtic influx from Ireland, and the Teutonic and Norse together, form
two currents of almost identical volume. Compared with either,
the contribution of the Latin or the Romance races sinks into
insignificance--an insignificance, however, that shows itself chiefly
in numbers, the traces of their character and influence being,
relatively to their numerical strength, marked. The immigrants from
Northern and Southern Europe have a disposition, in choosing their
new homes, to follow latitude, or rather the isotherms; the North-men
skirting the Canadian frontier and grouping themselves on the coldest
side of Lake Michigan, while the Italians, Spaniards and French drift
toward the Gulf States. The Irish and Germans are more cosmopolitan,
each in a like degree. They disperse with less regard to climate or
surroundings, and are more rapidly and imperceptibly absorbed and
blended, thus promoting rather than marring the homogeneity of the
American people. The Germans are,