Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/807

Rh While the only fecund branch of the Gallic race is that which inhabits Eastern Canada, the British people at home and abroad have displayed marvelous powers of expansion. Every year populous swarms leave the parent hive, yet they are scarcely missed. Despite the constant drain, the Island races in Europe double every fifty-six years and in the colonies every twenty-five years, whereas the population of France doubles only in one hundred and forty years. The French commenced the work of colonizing America at the same time as the British, yet the latter have expanded to 00,000,000, while the former are represented by a total of 2,000,000. The wonderful development of the Island races continues to follow the British flag in every quarter of the globe. In Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other colonies, the increase has been almost as marked as on this continent, and in strong contrast to the sterility of the French at home and in their colonies everywhere.

The capacity of the Island races to absorb foreign elements of population has been illustrated to an extraordinary degree in the United States. The surplus population of every country in Europe pours in a constant stream into the republic, bringing with it customs, languages, and ideas of government wholly different from those which prevail in the United States. Yet, in a short time, this foreign mass is assimilated. The aliens become naturalized citizens; they acquire very soon a knowledge of the prevailing language and the form of government. In a few years they are Americanized, and the second generation speak the language of the continent with the fluency of other natives, and are as thoroughly American citizens as the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers. In Louisiana a population of French origin have found it to their advantage to adopt the English language and the customs of the people among whom their lot is cast.

There can be little doubt, therefore, that the French Canadians would long since have blended with the dominant race, to their own great benefit and the advantage of the continent, had it not been for the mistaken policy of the British Government over a century ago, and the efforts of the Church of Rome to prevent a consolidation of the people of Canada into one nationality.

In view of these facts there is yet some hope for the future of the Dominion. The diffusion of knowledge among the people, their contact with more enterprising and advanced communities, now rendered practicable by the development of railway communication, and the investigating spirit of the age which priestcraft can not wholly subdue, must sooner or later produce changes which will make of the Canadians a homogeneous population. This is a solution of the problem as desirable as the only other one that has been suggested—a continental union which would crush out at once and forever the aspirations of those who are seeking to establish a new France on the banks of the St. Lawrence.