A FRENCHMAN'S VIEW OF ANGLO SAXON PROGRESS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2565, 25 March 1869, Page 3

A FRENCHMAN'S VIEW OF ANGLO SAXON PROGRESS.

{Translated from the French of M, Prewst Paradol.) Two rival powers, but only one as to the race, language, customs, and laws—England and the United States of America—are, with the exception of Europe, dominating the world. How is it possible not to recollect we could once have hoped that our race and language would be chosen by European civilisation to invade the remainder of the world ? We had every chance on our side, It was France which, through Canada and Louisiana, began to embrace North America; India seemed to belong to usj and were it not for the mistakes political liberty could have spared to our forefathers, the language and blood of France would, in all likelihood, occupy in the world the place, the language and blood that England have irrevocably conquered ; for destiny has spoken, and at least two portions of the globe, America and Oceanica, henceforth and forever belongto the Anglo-Saxon race. Moreover, now-a-nays, a book written in English is much more widely read than if it had been written in French; and it is with English words the navigator is hailed on almost all the accessible coasts of the earth. However, that actual predominance of the Anglo-Saxon race everywhere out of Europe is but a feeble image of what an approaching future has in store for us. According to the most moderate calculation, founded on the increase of the population during the last decennial period, the United States will number more than a hundred millions of inhabitants at the end of the present century—without speaking of the probable annexation of Mexico, and of the extension of the American Republic to the Panama Isthmus. It is not the less certain that Oceana belongs for ever to the Anglo-Saxons of Australia and New Zealand, and in that part of the world the march of events will also be very rapid. No doubt the discovery of gold greatly contributed to the rapid increase of the English population in Australia, but immigration has not diminished since the production of wool has become more important than the production of gold. Agriculture will soon predominate, and the plough will soon convert the soil. Whatever Power (the United States or Australia) may dominate in China, India, and Japan—it maybe that England maintains her empire in those regions for a long time, or that she abandons it to the young competitors to whom she gave life—our children are not the less assured of seeing the AngloSaxon race mistress of Oceanica as well as of America, and of all the countries of the farthest east that may be dominated, worked, or influenced by the possession of the sea. When affairs shall have reached that climax —and it is not too much to say that two centuries will suffice for it—will it be possible to deny, from one end of the globe to the other, that the world is Anglo-Saxon ? Neither Russia nor United Germany, supposing they should attain the highest fortune, can pretend to impede that current of things, nor prevent that solution—relatively near at hand—of the long rivalry of European races for the ultimate colonisation aud domination of the universe. The world will not be Russian, nor German, nor French, alas! nor Spanish. For it can be asse/tjd that, since the great navigation has given the whole world to the enterprise of the European races, three nations were tried one after the other by fate to play the first part in the fortune of mankind, by everywhere propagating their tongue and blood by means of durable colonie-, and by transforming, so to Bay, the whole world to their own likeness. During the sixteenth century it was rational to believe that Spanish civilisation would spread overall the world; but irremediable vices soon dispersed that colonial power, the vestiges of which, still covering a vast space, tell of its ephemeral grandeur. Then came the turn of France; and Louisiana and Canada have preserved the last remembrance of it. Lastly England came forward; she definitely accomplished the great work ; and England can disappear from the world without taking her work with her—without the future of the world beiug sensibly changed. Thus we can foretel through tlie imagination the future situation of the world, and glance at that picture the main lines of which are, so to say, already sketched by the hand of fate. And if we are inclined seriously to ask ourselves in what time the earth shall have taken that new form, we shall easily perceive that two centuries are scarcely necessary to bring to its apogee the Anglo-Saxon grandeur in the Oceanian region as well as on the American continent. 'I hat greatness once established, no one shall be able to menace from without, like Home, which was surrounded on every side by a barbarous world. There are no more barbarous nations, and the race which will be imerted with the guidance of mankind will have to fear neither competition nor the appearance of a new race. If a great political and moral change does not take place in France; if our population, obstinately attached to the rural soil, continues to increase with painful slowness, so long as we remain stationary or decrease, we shall weigh relatively in the same proportion in the Anglo-Saxon world as much as Athens did formerly in the Roman. Literature, wit, grace, and pleasure will reside with us; life, power, and solid glory elsewhere. [Poor M. Haradol forgets that a race that has free institutions and an open Bible must expand. We are "becoming a multitude of nations like the children of Ephraim in the midst of the earth,' simply because there is a latent power of lite and blessing in the use and possession of the open "Word." The Muscovite, the Spaniard, and the Frenchman cannot colonise as we do, because a male population are under the rule of despotism, and both male and female are in subjection to an unmarried priesthood, who deprive them of the free use of the " Word of God."]