“Proportions of Original Races in America.
“In writing these letters to the Boston Daily Advertiser, I attempted to confine myself to the facts which directly affect legislation or charitable action. There is, however, a curious question as to the effect to be produced on national character by intermixture of blood and race, produced by such large emigration as we see. What I have said in my last letter has been carefully guarded, so as to refer everywhere to the absolutely unmixed Celtic race. Of its value intermixed I have spoken as highly as I could.
“An anxious question is asked, however, by men of the old American blood, whether there is not an over-preponderance of the Celtic element coming in upon us? I do not profess to answer the question, how far the origin of the native American blood is Celtic.
“In what proportions do the Celtic and Gothic or Germanic elements mingle in the Englishman of today (1852) and, of course, in the American of today? Dr. Kombst estimates in 1841 that there are of pure German blood in England 10,000,000. Of mixed blood where the Teutonic prevailed in England and the northeast of Ireland, 6,000,000. Of mixed blood, where the Celtic prevailed in England, Scotland and Ireland, 4,000,000. And of pure Celtic in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, 6,000,000.
“But Dr. Lantham, with more reason, I think, doubts the purity of any Germanic blood in England, saying that ‘a vast amount of Celticism, not found in our tongue, very probably exists in our pedigrees.’ And in another place he says that in nine-tenths of the displacements of races made by conquest the female half ancestry of the present inhabitants must have belonged to the beaten race.
“I think the history of the Saxon invasions is such as to give color to this idea in the case of England. And I am not sure, but what it could be made out, that the American people, before the recent Irish invasion, showed in their proportion of black-haired men of dark complexion and other Celtic signs that as large a fraction as two-thirds of its blood ran in the dark ages of the past in Celtic veins. If this be so, if the proportion, two-thirds Celtic to one-third Gothic or Germanic, is the proportion which makes up that ‘perfect whole,’ the ‘true American,’ which considers itself so much finer than either of the ingredients, the recent emigrations furnish a happy co-incidence with the original law. For five past years the arrivals at New York, which are three fourths the whole, and represent it in kind exactly, have been 547,173 Irish; 278,458 Germanic; 153,969 English and Scotch; 71,359 others. Now keep these 71,359 ‘others’ for condiments in the mixture. There are Norwegians and French, Belgians and Spaniards, Swiss and Italians, balanced against each other (and a few Magyars).
“The English, of course, we need not count; but of pure Celts and pure Germans we have to fraction just two to one; and in that proportion are they to affect the blood of the American people.
“This computation which I had prepared before I read a courteous article in the American Celt of January 24, 1852, will, perhaps, show to the writer of that paper, that we are not so far apart in our views as he supposed.”
Mr. James Anthony Froude, in his history of Ireland, maligned the Irish people and did much to prejudice the world against them. Previous to his death he tried to undo the injustice he had done them. The following letter from Mr. Philbrick, superintendent of schools, explains itself:
Donohue’s Magazine, August, 1855, taken from Boston Transcript letter by Mr. Philbrick, superintendent of schools in Boston.