The reception given the first volume of this work by the Press and the Public has been so generous, and there has been such an encouraging recognition that an earnest attempt had been made to throw some light on an extremely complicated problem, that I may be deemed deficient in gratitude if I refer at all to criticisms. It is not, however, in a spirit of defense or resentment that I answer my courteous and temperate opponents, but this is a convenient way to make clear some things that seem to require elucidation.

It has been asserted that I have given undue importance to:

(1) English influence in the formation of the character of Americans and the institutions of America;

(2) The effect of the physical in race development; (3) The Puritan.

And that I have minimized:

(1) Dutch influence and that of nationalities other than English;

(2) The Irish and the Scotch in attributing the formation of American character exclusively to the English.

And, finally, that in asserting that the Americans of to-day are a new race and not a 'mongrel" race, I have ignored all the teachings of ethnology, since the study of race development positively teaches that there is no such thing as a "pure," unmixed, unvitiated strain.

It would be tedious and valueless to repeat the proof I adduced that the character of Americans and the institutions of America owe their influence to English inspiration, for to say more would be merely to reproduce in amplified form what has already been stated. To prove a negative is an impossibility; and my critics have contented themselves with questioning my deductions without bringing evidence to challenge my reasoning. An examination of the institutions of America, of its political philosophy, of its system of jurisprudence; of the thought and customs and viewpoint of life of its people, will show that they are English in origin and that they have not been colored or moulded by those of any other nation.

A learned friend of German extraction, whose judgment I highly respect, suggested that Bancroft termed "Holland, the mother of four of our states, and that it is impossible to conceive a family of four children uninfluenced by their mother. Bancroft's figure is rhetorical fancy rather than historical fact; in truth, it is an historical perversion. Holland did not give birth to four states of the American Union. Nearly nine hundred years have been enwrapped in "the great winding sheets, that bury all things in oblivion," since the Norman conqueror set foot on British soil, and yet nine centuries have not been long enough to stamp out the traces of that invasion. Norman customs, Norman words, some of

1 Bancroft: History of the United States of America, vol. 1, p. 527.

the law of the Normans is the legacy of that battle on the sands of Hastings. Where shall we find their Dutch counterpart in the life or speech or customs of America? Is there such a thing as Dutch law in the code of America? Do Dutch words, except those that became incorporated into the speech of the English, crop up in American conversation to visualize to the philologist their exotic origin or to be used unconsciously by the common people? Is there a single Dutch custom that has been virile enough to survive and has in the slightest influenced for good or evil the mental or social development of the American People? If we except the custom, rapidly falling into disuse, of calling on New Year's Day, which is Dutch and not English, we search in vain for any harvest of the Dutch planting of the New World. It was pointed out in the first volume1 that all a eulogist of the Dutch could discover as their gift to America was that "in New York, the high stoop house, and the peculiar observances of New Year's Day which continued until 1870, are two familiar relics of Holland. The valuable custom of registering transfers of real estate has been received from the same source." This is a pitifully weak foundation, as was already said, on which to attempt to erect a lasting monument to Dutch genius or to trace race influence.2

1 Page 391.

2 "But, their relative smallness of numbers and their local influence considered, the Dutch in New York and New Jersey, and the Germans and Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania, which of all the states is the least homogeneous,

I have been reminded that some of the men who played a leading part in the early history of New York were Dutch, that to-day the bearers of great names and the possessors of great wealth are of Dutch descent, the lineal descendants of those first settlers who colonized the New Netherlands. This is quite true, but it proves nothing. To deny these things would be to deny a physical fact, a thing too absurd to be worth a moment's serious discussion; but it does not meet the issue involved. The question is not that the Dutch settled New York and begat a sturdy progeny, for that we know to be true; but whether they were able to impress upon an alien people, and a virgin continent, and a plastic society their own language or customs or institutions. If so the proof must be easily accessible. Who will produce this proof? Who will give concrete illustration of the Dutch influence on American character or American civilization? It is not sufficient to rest the argument on generalities, or to be content with the vague assertion of "Dutch influence." To carry conviction something more specific is needed.

It is a striking illustration of "the master of superstition" and ineradicable tradition become respectable through the dignity of age, that while

though they unquestionably give a character to the parts in which they settled, constitute no real exception to the remark that the description of the spread of population from the Atlantic border westwardly is substantially that of the diffusion of English life." - Draper: History of the American Civil War, vol. 1, p. 173.

every American schoolboy will glibly repeat the parrot cry of “Dutch influence," French influence is seldom if ever referred to. It is not customary to think of the French as having left any mark on American thought, yet it is a fact that the only system of jurisprudence in the United States that is not English, is French; and while the Dutch came and went and left nothing behind to denote their brief power, not even roads or ruins as the Romans wrote their name on Britain, the French gave to Louisiana a civil code that has survived. With that single exception - all the more striking because it is the sole exception -no other "foreign" influence using that term to mean non-English has institutionally affected the United States. The Code Napoléon is the memorial that France erected to herself in America. England, France, Spain, Holland, and Sweden almost simultaneously colonized what is now the United States of America, yet, with the exception of England and France, there remains nothing to recall that great struggle for the possession of a continent which was to determine whether the Saxon, the Teuton, the Scandinavian, or the Latin should plant the New World and give to it his character, his language, and his institutions.1 It is perhaps of sufficient importance to mention that of the signers of the Declaration of Independ

1 "For though others, such as . . . Holland, by its establishments in New York, participated in the movement, the share taken by them was so subordinate as scarcely to influence the result."-Draper: History of the American Civil War, vol. 1, p. 127.

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