Nevada County picayune., 1889-12-18
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND.
The English to be the Spoken Lan-
 guage of the World.


 view that if the papacy were wise the next pope would think in English. We are reminded by the same writer, says the Tablet, that the center of gravity of our planet has shifted and that the Mediterranean is fast be- coming an idle inland sea locked in q decaying continent. It has played its part in the past of humanity, but the part is over and done. The seat of empire is again following the sun as it has always done, and is once more drifting into the west.
 We are constantly told that Europe is dwinding and becoming of no ac- count, and that the mastery of the world will rest with the people from whose lips fall the music of our En- glish speech. The old quarrels, the frotier feuds of Europe, the strife and rivalries of Teuton and Gaul, will endure for yet n little longer, but they are always of fading consc- uuence for the world. The French and German armies may watch one another from across the Rhine, and the Cossack may still dream of water ing his horse beneath the shadow of St. Sophia, but these poor ambitions and hatreds will mean as little for the future @ mankind as did the quar- rels of the greens and the blues in the dying days of the lower empire. The map of Europe may be chahged and rcchanged, and it's people may conquer and be conquered. but they and the very tongues they speak shall fall and fade entirely, until French and Slav and German. eX- cept for their lteratures, shall be- come forgotten dialects like Welsh or Irish, the picturesque survivals of an old world trihalism. It may be worth while, then, to pause for lit tie and see what justification in sober fact there is in this loud boast of the coming emplre and almost universal
 
 domination of the Englishspeaking people. At the present hour the peo- ples of the United Kingdom and the United States represent about one fifteenth of humanity. and govern one-third of the planet and one fourth of it's inhabitants. In the be- ginning of the eighteenth century this race numbered less than 6,O00,- GOO souls; at the beginning of the nineteenth century that they in creased to 20, 300 ,0OO: at the pres ent time they are 100, 100000. In the space of eighty years the English speaking people multiplied five times over. and it Is confidently reckoned that within another one hundred years they will have outnumbered all the other civilized people put togeth- CT. NJ. Hummer, the chief of the federal bureau of statistics in SwitZ- erland, has reckoned that the total population of Europe in the year 2OOO will be j6j, ,0OO, ,O0O, while Dr. Strong, of New York. reckons that in 1880 the population of Europe will be 534, ,OOO, GOO. No complete statis- tics showing the average increase over all Europe are available for the early decades of the century, but the average increase of the continent for the ten years from 1870 to 1880 was G.S9. If, however. we were to ap- | ply the same test to the English peO- pies, and suppose them to multiply for another hundred years as they did from 1870 to 1880, they would reach the enormous total of 1 .343, GOO .0O0. It would be unreasonable. however, that the ratio of increase will continue so long. Dr. Strong bases his calculations in this way {: In Great Britan the ratio of increase from lS4O to 1850 was 249 per cent : during the next ten years it was 5.4 | ; the next ten years it was S.60; and from 1870 to 1880 it was l0.57 per cent, So we see the ratio of increase steadily rising for forty years, and there Is no apparent reason why it should not continue to rise. But as he k dealing with so long period of time as 100 years, Dr. Strong prefers to suppose that the average ratio of increase for the century will be only half what it has been during the last decade, and so puts the probable population of Great Britian in 1880 at 57,OOO, ,OOO. On the other hand, the Swiss statistician fixes it for 20OO at ll2, ,000, ,O00. Accepting, however, the American estimate. let us consid-