g was veritably one of surprises,--for the
historical student it would, indeed, seem as if 1898 was destined to
pass into the long record as almost the Year of Surprises. We now come
to the consideration of some of these wholly unanticipated results from
the American point of view. And in entering on this aspect of the
question, it is necessary once more to remind you that we are doing it
in the historical spirit, and from the historical point of view. We are
stating facts not supposed to admit of denial. The argument and
inferences to be drawn from those facts do not belong to this occasion.
Some will reach one conclusion as to the future, and the bearing those
facts have upon its probable development, and some will reach another
conclusion; with these conclusions we have nothing to do. Our business
is exclusively with the facts.

Speaking largely, but still with all necessary historical accuracy,
America has been peopled, and its development, up to the present time,
worked out through two great stocks of the European family,--the
Spanish-speaking stock, and the English-speaking stock. In their
development these two have pursued lines, clearly marked, but curiously
divergent. Leaving the Spanish-speaking branch out of the discussion, as
unnecessary to it, it may without exaggeration be said of the
English-speaking branch that, from the beginning down to this year now
ending, its development has been one long protest against, and
divergence from, Old World methods and ideals. In the case of those
descended from the Forefathers,--as we always designate the Plymouth
colony,--this has been most distinctly marked, ethnically, politically,
industrially.

America was the sphere where the European, as a colonist, a settler,
first came on a large scale in contact with another race. Heretofore, in
the Old World, when one stock had overrun another,--and history
presented many examples of it,--the invading stock, after subduing, and
to a great extent driving out, the stock which had preceded in the
occupancy of a region, settled gradually down into a common possession,
and, in the slow process of years, an amalgamation of stocks, more or
less complete, took place. In America, with the Anglo-Saxon, and
especially those of the New England type, this was not the case. Unlike
the Frenchman at the north, or the Spaniard at the south, the
Anglo-Saxon showed no disposition to ally himself with the
aborigines,--he evinced no faculty of