Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/14



this day there are two great tribes of men in Christendom, which seem to have a promising future before them—the Sclavonic and the Anglo-Saxon. Both are comparatively new. For the last three hundred years each has been continually advancing in numbers, riches, and territory; in industrial and military power. To judge from present appearances, it seems probable that a hundred years hence there will be only two great national forces m the Christian world—the Sclavonic and the Anglo-Saxon.

The Anglo-Saxon tribe is composite, and the mingling so recent, that we can still easily distinguish the main ingredients of the mixture. There are, first, the Saxons and Angles from North Germany; next, the Scandinavians from Denmark and Sweden; and, finally, the Normans, or Romanized Scandinavians, from France. This tribe is now divided into two great political branches, namely, the Anglo-Saxon Briton, and the Anglo-Saxon American; but both are substantially the same people, though with different antecedents and surroundings. The same fundamental characteristics belong to the Briton and the American.

Three hundred years ago, the Anglo-Saxons were scarce three millions in number ; they did not own the whole of Great Britain. Now there are thirty or forty millions of men with Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins. They possess