The People of the United States.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 2, 8 January 1903, Page 15

The People of the United States.

How erroneous is the claim of kinship, based on ' one language one race, one religion,' between England and the United Stateß, is clear (says the ' Aye Maria') from even a perfunctory examination of the facta. As regards religion, just one-half of the churchgoers of this country are Catholics. As to race, there are not enough Americans with English blood in their veins to populate the pathetically email State of Rhode Island. Nor is the language count much stronger. There are farming sections in the country, and vast congested districts in every large city, where English is a foreign tongue. 'There are no fewer than 25 newspaper languages in this country,' says the New York ' World.' ' The news of each day and comments thereon are presented to multitudes of readers in types that represent, besides English, tbe following tongues or some combination of them : Arabic, Armenian, Bohemian, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indian, Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Slavonic, Spanish, Scandinavian, Volapuk, and Welsh.' Some day there will be uniformity of language, of course, and the surviving tongue will be English. Some day, too, there will be racial solidarity, and the race will be American. And some day, please God, there will be unanimity of religious faith ; and when that day corned there will be a thousand instead of a hundred bishops in the North American hierarchy.