In this rapid and necessarily imperfect sketch, I have endeavored to show the relative proportion of the Teutonic blood in the population of the various countries of Europe. I have endeavored to direct the reader's attention to the fact, that though it forms an element in the population of all, it exists in perfect purity in but few, and that England presents a happy fusion of some of the most distinguished branches of the German family. If we now glance at the United States, we shall there find—at least in the first years of her national existence—a pendant to what has been asserted of England. The elements of the population of the original thirteen States, were almost exclusively of English, Lowland Scotch, Dutch, and Swedish blood; that is to say, decidedly Germanic. Ireland was as yet slightly represented. France had made but inconsiderable contributions to the population. Since we have assumed a rank among the great powers of the earth, every portion of the inhabited globe has sent us its contingent of blood, yet even now, the great body of the nation belongs to the Teutonic race.
Much has been said of the effects of ethnical mixture. Many consider it as decidedly beneficial, others as decidedly deleterious. It seems to me susceptible of mathematical demonstration, that when a very inferior race amalgamates with one of higher order, the compound—though superior to the one, must be inferior to the other. In that case, therefore, mixture is injurious. But when various branches of the same race, or nearly cognate races mix, as in the case of the Saxons, Angles, Danes, and Normans, the mixture cannot but be beneficial. For, while none of the higher qualities are lost, the compound presents a felicitous combination of some of the virtues peculiar to each.
If our civilization received its tone and character from the Teutonic race, as Mr. Gobineau asserts, this character must be most strikingly displayed wherever that race forms the preponderating element of the population.
Before investigating this question, we must cast a glance on the manners and modes of thinking that characterized this race in the earliest times. Unfortunately, but few records are left to assist us in forming a judgment. Tacitus's celebrated treatise was, probably, more an imaginary sketch, which he wished to hold up to a people sunk in luxury and vice, as were his countrymen. In our times, the North American Indian has often been held up as a model of uncorrupted simplicity, and many touching romances have been written on the theme, now rather hackneyed and out of fashion. But though the noble Roman may have highly colored the picture, the incorruptible love of truth, which shines so brilliantly in all his works, assures us of the truth of its outlines.
Of one thing we can entertain no doubt, viz: that history nowhere shows us our Germanic forefathers in the same state of barbarism that we find other races—many of the American Indians, the South-Sea Islanders, and others. In the earliest times they practised agriculture, they cultivated rye, barley, oats and wheat. Many of the tribes had regular farms, which were inclosed. They knew how to work iron, an art which even the most civilized of the American Indians had never learned. They had extensive and complicated political relations, often forming themselves in vast confederacies. But, above all, they were an eminently chaste people; they respected woman,[93] and assigned to her her legitimate place in the social circle. Marriage with them was a sacred institution.
The greatest point of superiority of our civilization, over all preceding and contemporaneous ones—a point which Mr. Gobineau has omitted to mention—is the high rank which woman occupies in the modern structure of society. The boasted civilizations of Greece and Rome, if superior in others, are vastly inferior to us in this respect. And this glorious superiority we owe to the pure and chaste manners of our forefathers.
Representative government, trial by jury, and all the discoveries in political science upon which we pride ourselves most, are the necessary development of their simple institutions, to which, indeed, they can be distinctly traced.
I have purposely selected these two characteristics of the German races—respect for woman, and love of liberty, or, what is more, a capacity for establishing and preserving liberal institutions. The question now resolves itself into this: Does woman occupy the highest rank, do liberal institutions best flourish where the Germanic race is most pure? I will not answer the question, but beg the reader to compare the more Germanic countries with those that are less so—England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Northern Germany, with France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Russia; the United States and Canada, with Mexico and the South American republics.
Mr. Gobineau speaks of the utilitarian character of the Germanic races, but furnishes no proofs of his assertion. I shall therefore endeavor to supply the deficiency.
Those countries which ethnology tells us contain the most Germanic populations, viz: England, the northern States of Europe, including Holland, and the United States, have the entire commerce, and nearly all the manufacture of the whole world in their hands. They have given to mankind all the great inventions which shed an everlasting lustre over our era. They, together, possess nine-tenths of all the railroads built in the world, and the greater part of the remaining tenth was built by their enterprise and capital. Whatever perfection in the useful arts one of these countries attains, is readily adopted by all; slowly only, and sometimes never by any of the others.