MAKING AND BREAKING OF THE "OLD EMPIRE" Glance for a moment at the effect of these historical influences upon emigration across the North Atlantic. Every defeat or oppression of any religious cause in western Europe brought further reinforcements to the Colonies. The Puritans were fol lowed by Royalists, Catholics, Quakers; and, after the rampant orthodox reaction under Charles II., by Nonconformists of all sects. Transportation of criminals—many of whom would not be considered such under the humanized codes of our day— played its part though a minor one. When Cromwell sent the Irish to Barbados and elsewhere, they became indeed English speakers in spite of themselves, but he set up a movement which was to have its Nemesis.
In the i8th century another factor became very notable. Penn opening his colony to all comers whatever their creed, if otherwise suitable, had drawn in already Welsh Baptists and Scoto-Irish Presbyterians. From the end of the 17th century, the emigrants from Ulster, and their kin from Scotland itself, streamed for generation after generation into North America. Their tough fibre, keen intelligence and concentrated practical energy, added a colonizing force second to none in worth. Impossible to overestimate its importance in American history. It is reckoned that at the time of the declara tion of independence the Scoto-Irish and the Scots proper of similar type, formed one-sixth of the entire population—that is they were about half a million—and in the struggle they were the most vehement and unyielding of all. Already in North America, an "English-speaker" might be, and often was, something very different in blood, temperament, thought, and character from the average man of purely English race.
But this indeed was to be more and more the process of tre mendous significance in America. First by thousands, and then by hundreds of thousands, and then by millions upon mil lions down to this day, it was to make "English-speakers" out of emigrants not derived from the "Anglo-Saxon" stock—that name itself a blurred generalization—and often having little affinity with it. The Dutch and Swedish strains had been there from old time. Germans came in numbers when Pennsylvania was opened on inviting terms, and they clung to the language and ways of their old Fatherland. Next French Huguenots came when Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantes. Fleeing on the contrary from Protestant oppression, the Celtic and Catholic Irish were already present though as yet not in large numbers. And the Jews had already made their appearance. When Oglethorpe founded the thirteenth colony, Georgia, as late as 1732, the settlers included Jews from most countries in Europe, but also more Germans (in great part from Salzburg, Bohemia and Moravia in the Aus trian dominions) and Scottish Highlanders as well as English folk of every sort.
Despite all mingling and blending so far, let us make no mistake. England itself had been through out as from the beginning the main reservoir wherefrom flowed the widening currents of American life. The pioneer race remained preponderant, no matter how deeply the numerous admixtures just described might modify the temper and traits of the social aggregate. Professor Beard puts it: "Beyond question the over whelming majority of white people in the colonies were of Eng lish descent; the arrangement of classes was English; the law which held together the whole social order was English in essence. . . . The language of bench and bar, pulpit and press was English. . . . Whether for praise, blame or merriment, colonial America was basically English." English-Speakers and France: the Decision (1756-1763). —For the affair of English-speaking expansion in the world the Seven Years' War was by far the largest event since the rise of Cromwell's new sea-power. With the opening of the final struggle between Great Britain and France, for the control of the whole American interior from the Mississippi Valley and the St. Law rence to the Pacific Ocean, the issue was almost predestined. The little island at home, swarming at that time with every kind of vitality and ability—in literature, science, art as in trade, politics and arms—remained an impregnable stronghold of sea-power. The English-speakers on both shores of the Atlantic and in every field of adventure had at their head at last a leader aquiline in genius as in feature, Chatham. "England has been a long time in labour but she has brought forth a man." All put together this rising race—four-fifths of it then of the breed that made the language— were still so far exceeded by the numbers of the French in Europe that the situation always was a cause of anxiety. But France had the Pompadour at her head and Frederick the Great as well as Chatham on her hands. Above all—no single statement in this article is more enlightening—across the Atlantic, the ratio of English settlers to French was already (1756) at least twelve to one; some estimates make it as great as 15 to one, and it may have been so.
How had the relative positions of the rival colonists come to stand as it did? Long ago French enterprise had been earlier and more active in the field. There seemed no reason why that bril liant and teeming nation should not achieve colonial and maritime domination and a new world-empire. But European aims and a singular attachment to native soil forbade concentration upon overseas policy. When the power of Louis XIV. was at its zenith in the opening years of the i8th century he had less than io,000 French-speaking subjects in North America, and even when the Seven Years' War (1756) began there were less than ioo,000 in Canada.
By contrast what had been happening in the Thirteen Colonies? We have glimpses at irregular periods of the growth of their white population: 1688 . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 00,000 1717 . . . . . . . . . . 3 75,000 1756 . . . . . . . . . . . 1,15 0,000 If this breed was at least twelve to one in numbers, against the North American French-speakers, its resources were still larger in proportion. New York alone was more than equal in man-power to all the French settlements put together. So at the end of this World War (waged simultaneously in three continents) French aspirations were eliminated from North America in 1763, as Dutch sovereignty about 90 years before had been removed from New York. An "English-speaking world," politically undivided was established, but even now it held less than 12,000,000 English speakers all told (while defeated France contained 20,000,000 people whose formidable possibilities were soon to shake the earth) but their position in world affairs was magnificent. The bulk of all North America was solidly in their hands; they were predominant in India; all the oceans were open to their maritime and commercial ascendancy. New England ports like Salem flour ished on the India trade like the ports of Old England.
We must not attempt here to discuss the causes of the disruption of the Old Empire nor to follow the course of the War of Independence. France had her revanche at Yorktown but against the maritime coalition British sea-power in 1782 survived the deadliest of all its hours of peril; and the island retained Canada. In a very few years more, the American Union was constituted and the French Revolution broke out. The great disruption soon proved not to be a check but a stimulus in many ways to the growth of both branches of the English-speakers. In population and territories, for nearly three generations yet, and still more in commerce and wealth, the mother-island, not only unexhausted but more prolific inventive and successful than ever, was to remain preponderant. Only now began the astonishing movements which in another hundred years were to establish the English-speakers in two more continents. In the continent first settled, the progress of the new American Republic was to increase their numbers to a degree beyond imagination at that time. After the foundation of the United States, and just before the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, there were in 1790 not much more than about 16,000,000 English-speakers in the world at the most, including nearly 4,000, 000 in North America (but excluding those in the British islands using only Gaelic or Welsh), while there were over 26,000,000 persons to whom French was native, including its element in Switzerland, in what we now call Belgium, in Canada, Louisiana and the West Indies. It is now convenient to divide the subject into two parts which will be brought together in a final view.
