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NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CXXXVI.

JULY, 1847.

ARRÉ.

ART. I. Histoire de la Louisiane. Par CHARLES GAYNouvelle-Orléans. Imprimé par Magne et Weisse. 1847. 2 vols. 8vo.

REPUBLICAN institutions seem to have great power in fusing together and assimilating to each other the most heterogeneous elements of national character. Nearly all the nations of Europe have furnished their quota for making up the population of the United States, so that if each stock had preserved its original characteristics, the aggregate of the inhabitants of this country would have resembled the conglomerate or pudding-stone formation in geology, in which angular and rounded pebbles, with every variety of size, shape, and internal composition, are merely held together by a rocky cement,-united by juxtaposition, but by no chemical affinities. A monarchical government, which has extended its dominions by conquest, and holds the greater portion of them merely by the sword, causes only this imperfect and unnatural union among the several classes of its subjects; which binds them may be more or less indurated, according to its degree of native strength, or to the lapse of time during which it has been exposed to the action of elemental forces; but the pebbles imbedded in it continue unchanged; their form remains as it was determined by mutual attrition, when they were free to roll over each other under the impulse of the waves and the resistance of the beach. But political freedom acts like a common solvent in chemistry; the powerful acid takes up the most refractory and dissimilar

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the mortar

bases, and converts them into neutral salts. The particles, as in a state of comminution or perfect solvency, are free to act on each other, and the beautiful laws of affinity come into play, forming compounds in which no trace of the original character of the ingredients can be discerned. The action is not always immediate, it is true; some time may be necessary to allow the solution to be completed and the new crystallizations to take place. But when the process is ended, the change of qualities is complete; it is nature's handiwork contrasted with the imperfect joinery and forced combinations effected by human art, when man attempts to violate or overrule the laws of God.

The history and present condition of Belgium, Italy, Poland, and other countries in Europe which have long been subject to the dominion of foreigners, show how difficult it is to amalgamate two races into one, when they are brought together only by an external force, and are both subject to arbitrary rule. A principle of mutual repulsion exists between the conquerors and the enslaved, the effects of which are continued to distant generations. After the exasperated feelings caused by the original subjugation of the country have subsided, their place is supplied by the distinctions of caste founded upon the same event, which are still more capable than the former of perpetuating the disunion. The miseries of Ireland at the present time may be attributed in great part to the entire separation from each other of the two races by which it is inhabited; the Erse and the AngloSaxon blood will never mingle in the country where they were first brought together; mutual and continued irritation is the only consequence of holding them in contact. The forcible measure of a legislative union of the two nations did not create the difficulty; a repeal of that union will not remove it. The disorder is wholly internal; the Irish serf quarrels with his English landlord, and not with the English government, which is a better one than he would probably frame for himself. Yet the descendants of these two hostile nations live harmoniously by each other's side in our own land, and but few generations elapse before they look back upon a common ancestry.

Crossing the breed promotes the excellence of the stock of domestic animals. There is no reason why the same law of nature should not hold good with respect to man, and

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