Creole Sketches/Latin and Anglo-Saxon
LATIN AND ANGLO-SAXON[1]
The French papers in Canada have latterly warned their readers that the Canadian French are being slowly but surely absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon element, and have been advising them to push forward into the valley of the Ottawa and there found settlements. This may possibly be done; but the end will, no doubt, be the same. The Canadian French have, nevertheless, been among the most thrifty, energetic, and enterprising pioneers in the world; certainly no other men with Latin blood in their veins ever showed more endurance and daring than the famous coureurs des bois and chasseurs de loutre. If the French Canadian is to be absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon element, we cannot avoid asking ourselves what chance the French element of Louisiana can have to resist absorption when the flood of emigration begins to pour southward with the advancing lines of railway?
The chances, in our opinion, are rather in favor of the Canadian French resisting longer than our own Creoles — unless the French element should be kept up by a continuous immigration. Old manners and customs and dialects and families endure longer in a severe Northern climate than in a semi-tropical land like our own. As we near the tropics decay becomes more rapid — not only material decay of substance, but decay of social conditions and institutions as well. Our French element is not composed, however, of such stern stuff as the French people of Canada. They have become semitropicalized here; — they have felt the enchantment of a climate of perennial mildness, and have lived for generations under very different conditions to those which have hardened and invigorated the French people of Canada. It must be remembered also that the French Canadians have had to resist the strongest absorbing influences possible — those of the English, Scotch, and Irish elements in all their purity and force. The geographical position of Louisiana, her climate, and her comparative isolation only recently broken by new railroad lines, have aided the Louisiana Creoles in maintaining their individuality and their pleasant old-fashioned manner of existence.
We have often attempted to analyze the cause of the undoubted predominance of the Anglo-Saxon race wherever it plants itself. Many causes have been adduced, but none seem to us satisfactory. The Latin races are not less hardy and enduring, though inferior in physical strength. They are not less intelligent, though less self-denying. They are not less patriotic, though more cosmopolitan. They possess a number of sterling qualities which are wholly foreign to Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, or Scandinavian character. In our opinion the real secret of the predominance of Northern races lies in the same causes which may partly account for the conquest of the Western Empire by the Goths, after the Roman armies had been fairly worn out in repelling barbaric invasion. The Northern races are far more prolific than the Latin. The Germans of to-day, for example, are filling up America with emigrants. What Latin race can send out such armies of emigrants? Probably not all the Latin races together could do so! The fact is not perhaps flattering to the Northern races of Europe; for it is said that the lower organizations propagate most rapidly in all the orders of nature. But history confirms the fact that the real strength of a people lies not in valor and endurance alone, but in its capacity of self-multiplication. Nor is this comforting to think of when we gaze toward China. Idea is stronger than force for a time only; force at length will carry all before it.
- ↑ Item, November 24, 1880.