The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-21 00:00:00

THE LATIN AND THE ANGLO-SAXON
RACES.

(From the Anglo-American Times)

The Saturday Review, last week, discussed
"buncombe," which it declared to mean vulgarity,
the exaggerated display of the parvenu chiefly de-
veloped during the transition state from early settle-
ment to established society. The writer who dwelt on
it as applicable to America, the word being American,
and signifying an American idea, made the usual
mistake of applying his English thoughts to Ame-
rica. When men spoke, in what appeared to him
exaggerated language, of the geographical features
of the country, it was " buncombe," when they
sketched what to them seemed its future, being to
the Englishman extravagant, it was " buncombe,"
when in illustrating the conceptions of his brain, the
American used gra►►d metaphor—he'reached the acme
of " buncombe." The Englishman does not make
allowance for the change sure to be wrought in the
mind in the course of time by the features of a coun-
try. It is morally impossible that an American of
three generations could think in the same groove as
au Englishman. The first impression an American
icceives on landing in Great Britain is the sense of
confinement; the notion that if he goes out after dark
he may be drowntd in the Irish Sea or in the Ger-
man Ocean, or if he steps off the road he may fall
over the chalk cliffs into the English Channel. In
America the Englishman is impressed with vast-
ness. Accustomed to his little streams, he never
realizes what a river is till he sees one such as the
St. Lawrence or the Hudson ; or, what space means
till he has been borne for days across a lake at little
less than railroad speed, and seen the sun rise on a
boundless plain over which he was rushing behind
a locomotive, and the sun set still on the broad
prairie, with the sense in his mind that he had been
hurrying without cessation over a country not a
feature of which had changed. 'The preface of the
book La France Nouvelle, which has created so much
sensation in France that the first edition was ex-
hausted in four days, discusses the future of the
Anglo-Saxon race in terms which, if adopted by an
American, would be styled " buncombe." The
writer considers that the world is Anglo-Saxon, past
praying for. He describes creation, with the ex-
ception of Europe, as being dominated by two rival
Powers, though one in race, language, customs, and
laws. Yet this is but a feeble image of what au ap-
proaching future has in store for -the Anglo-
&ow*. The United States must number by the
end of the century 100,000,000, without calculating
its extension to Panama. South America will be
absorbed when desirable. Nor can this future
be averted by any division of the Republic,
for the fractions will be more active devourers of
territory than the whole. Had secession succeeded,
the Confederacy would have invaded Mexico sooner
than the Republic. The author thinks that under
any circumstances the American continent, North
and South, will belong to the Anglo-Saxon race,
and that the change will be accomplished
in a century, or a century and a half. When
Americans talk in this style they are gene-
rally accused of spreadeagleism, buncombe,
or highfaluten ; men stni'e, shrug their shoulders,
and mutter he is off on the manifest destiny doc-
trine. So it is when these remarks are confined to
their own branch of the family. But it has quite
another aspect when described from the general
stand• point, which embraces in the landscape all the
Anglo-Saxon peoples. The French author discusses
the occupation of America as but a part of the
progress of these nations. It is not less certain, he
says, that Oceana belongs for ever to the Anglo-
Saxons of Australia and New Zealand, the footing
obtained in the Pacific insuring to these descend-
ants of England the control of that ocean. On one
side is the American sea-board, on the other that of
Australia and New Zealand, and with the thousands
of islands dotted over the Pacific, sooner or later
China must acknowledge them as masters. The
author has evidently no idea of the progress of San
Francisco, and the connection between that city
and the coasts of Japan and China. He thinks
that Australia will rule in these countries, and, if
England should collapse, also in India. We hold a
very different opinion, but this does not disturb the
author's conclUsion, for he writes of the race as a
whole, not of the predominance of any of its sec-
tions, and he assures his countrymen that their
children are not the less certain to see the Anglo-
Saxon, Mistress of Oceana and of all the countries
of the furthest East that may be dominated,
worked, or influenced by the possession of the
sea. He gives two centuries as the outside
of the time required to reach this climax,
when it will be impassible to deny that
from end to end the world is Anglo-Saxon.
The French are awaking to the conviction that
they are hopelessly beaten in the race for Empire ;
but they may see with some degree of satisfaction
that other countries have been still more decidedly
defeated. In the sixteenth century, for a short
apace, mankind were deluded into the notion that
the world's sway was about to pass into the hands
of Spain. Three European nations were tried one
after the other to act the part of everywhere pro-
pagating their tongue and blood, by means of dur-
able colonies, and by transforming, so to say, the
globe to their own likeness. Spain failed, and
France failed ; then came the turn of England, and
she so succeeded that if a convulsion of nature was
to swamp Great Britain, the future of her race
would not be sensibly changed. Now this we believe
to be an exaggeration, holding that Germany would,
through its vast emigration and its intellectual
capacity, produce an immense effect on the nations
now formed by England. As the case stands, we
think with the author that neither Russia nor North
Germany, should they attain the highest fortune, can
pretend to impede the current of things, nor pre-
vent the earth becoming Anglo-Saxon. Should
Russia possess Constantinople, still she cannot
balance the naval power of the Anglo-Saxons, and
her military progressings on the Asiatic continent
will be at once stopped when she meets England in
India, and Australia, or the United States in China.
The idea of the Frenchman is, that a race cannot
attain this sovereignty by mere conquest, for it is
the result only of colonization, and the Russian has
not developed the necessary emigration and colonizing
qualities. Germany has, but too late, for there is
no space open to her. Australia is occupied, and
America closed, and should she, always jealous and
proud, resolve to direct her tide of emigration
towards some war colony where her flag could wave,
its situation is not easy to ascertain, nor could it
ever counterbalance the American and Australian
continents henceforth belonging irrevocably to the
Anglo-Saxon race. Thus he arrives at the conclu-
sion that the greatness once established cannot be
menaced from without like Rome, surrounded by a
barbarous world. The contemplation of this picture,
however agreeable to the Anglo-Saxon, raises any
but pleasing sensations in the Latin mind, and the
fitful efforts of France have again and again been
directed to counteract the growing influence by the
erection of some great Latin empire, where the
family might take root and spread. This was the
idea which dictated the invasion of Mexico, the
establishment of Saigon, the occupation of New
Caledonia and Madagascar. But the French are a
conquering, not a colonizing, people, and every
attempt has been a failure. One chance alone re-
mains, and it is to this the author desires to draw
attention. Algeria, he says, must be the source of
this New France, and a hundred millions of French-
men established o❑ both sides the Mediterranean
would resist the Anglo-Saxon current. He recog-
nizes the fact that it is necessary to infuse
a new life into the nation, an I that they
must, in the proper sense of the word,
colonize the country. In numbers alone he can see
strength, and he asserts that if a great political and
moral change does not take place in France, if the
population, obstinately attached to the rural soil,
continues to increase with painful slowness, the
French will weigh relatively to the Anglo-Saxon
as Athens did to Rome. Literature, wit, grace, and
pleasure will reside with them ; life, power, and
solid glory elsewhere. In this division we doubt if
the French will not have the best of it, but they are
not content with a large share of the good things,
so they desire to trespass on the Anglo-Saxon
preserve. The author in counting heads scarcely
gives a jut estimate of the future of the Anglo-