And so the
issue only made it apparent to an astonished world that instead of _one_
there were now _two Englands_, alike prepared to work with might and
main toward the political regeneration of mankind.
Let us consider now to what conclusions the rapidity and unabated
steadiness of the increase of the English race in America must lead us
as we go on to forecast the future. Carlyle somewhere speaks slightingly
of the fact that the Americans double their numbers every twenty years,
as if to have forty million dollar-hunters in the world were any better
than to have twenty million dollar-hunters! The implication that
Americans are nothing but dollar-hunters, and are thereby
distinguishable from the rest of mankind, would not perhaps bear too
elaborate scrutiny. But during the present lecture we have been
considering the gradual transfer of the preponderance of physical
strength from the hands of the war-loving portion of the human race into
the hands of the peace-loving portion,--into the hands of the
dollar-hunters, if you please, but out of the hands of the
scalp-hunters. Obviously to double the numbers of a pre-eminently
industrious, peaceful, orderly, and free-thinking community, is somewhat
to increase the weight in the world of the tendencies that go towards
making communities free and orderly and peaceful and industrious.
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